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Please note: this call for papers closes on Friday 11th February


Call for papers: Emerging geographies of animal-technology co-productions

RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London
31 August - 2 September 2011

Convenors: Lewis Holloway (University of Hull), Chris Bear (Aberystwyth University), Carol Morris (University of Nottingham) and Katy Wilkinson (University of Hull)
Session sponsors: Social and Cultural Geography Research Group and Rural Geography Research Group


Engagements with technologies have complex effects on animals. Animals' bodies and identities have become increasingly articulated by the technologised environments into which they are placed, and around whom they are constructed. Their bodies, for example, may be probed, mapped, envisioned, modified in the present or across generations, mined for data or used to produce corporeal goods. Their behaviours and subjectivities are produced or constrained. But at the same time, through co-productions of the animal and the technological, animals have complex effects on technologies. These are designed around or accommodate understandings of, variously, animals' bodies, subjectivities, needs, welfare and so on. Indeed, in some instances the animal and the technological may be so bound up with each other that differentiating between them becomes problematic.

This session aims to examine such animal-technology co-productions and hybridities. It responds to agendas in geography and across the social sciences which emphasise the relational enactment of humans and nonhumans, and which seek to theorise and explore the social, political and ethical implications of our relationships with nonhuman others. The session aims to explore the specifics of different animal-technology co-productions, focusing on their associated knowledge-practices, the enactments of specific animal-technology relationships in particular places, and the simultaneous co-constitution of the humans who are inevitably and complexly tangled up in these relations.

We seek papers from a range of perspectives that address the issues of animal-technology co-productions. Papers may address one or more of the following questions:


* How is the animal and the technological enacted, envisioned and imagined in particular animal-technology co-productions?
* How are the boundaries between the animal and the technological negotiated, policed, disputed and muddied in contemporary animal-technology co-productions?
* How can the roles of humans be conceptualised vis-à-vis animal-technology co-productions?
* What knowledges can be produced about animals in their co-productions with technologies? And what knowledges are produced about technologies as they are co-produced with animals?
* What conceptual resources are needed for making sense of animal-technology co-productions?
* How can the emerging biopolitics of animal-technology co-productions be framed to articulate effectively the power relations of interventions into the 'life itself' of animals in their relationships with technologies?
* What ethical frameworks are necessary or can be constructed in exploring, legitimising or disputing particular animal-technology co-productions?
* How are particular sites and spaces implicated in the articulation of animal-technology co-productions, and how do the co-productions of the animal and the technological also produce particular places and spatialities?

Please send proposed titles and abstracts (up to a maximum of 250 words), clearly stating name, institution and contact details, to Lewis Holloway: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]:[log in to unmask]>>, Chris Bear: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]:[log in to unmask]>>, Carol Morris: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]:[log in to unmask]>>, and Katy Wilkinson: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]:[log in to unmask]>> by Friday 11th February.

________________________________
Dr Christopher Bear
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Institute of Geography & Earth Sciences
Aberystwyth University
Llandinam Building
Penglais Campus
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DB
UK

Phone +(44) 1970 622592
Fax +(44) 1970 622659

http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/iges/staff/academic-staff/dr-chris-bear/


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