Call For Papers: Human-Plant Geographies
Association for American Geographers (AAG) New York 24th-28th February 2012
Human-plant relations have received limited attention in social studies and biogeographic work. This neglect is puzzling since human-plant relations are central to many sustainability debates (biodiversity protection, food security and production, natural resource management, ethical consumption, carbon sequestration, greening housing, invasive species control, etc.). Understanding the diversity of human-plant relationships requires active engagement from within the natural and social sciences. This session is intended to explore human-plant geographies in ways that do not always place humans at the centre. This session is inspired by ongoing debates among an international group of scholars, begun at the Institute of Australian Geographers Conference in Wollongong in July 2011. We aim to extend and elaborate conversations with others. We invite papers that approach human-plant relations from diverse disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological positions. Themes may include, but are not limited to:
§ Plants and people as co-producers of spaces and places;
§ Plant agency, reassessing the assumed object/passive status of plants;
§ Human-plant relations at different scales of space and time;
§ Methods for understanding human-plant relations ;
§ Issues of boundary-making and challenge, examining the practices and politics of human-plant belonging; and,
§ Possibilities and practicalities of ethico-political relations among people and plants.
Convenors:
Kathleen Buckingham (University of Oxford) and Catherine Phillips (University of Wollongong)
Chair: Jenny Atchison (University of Wollongong)
Discussants: Lesley Head (University of Wollongong) and Maan Barua (University of Oxford)
Please send abstracts (250 word limit, plus keywords) for consideration by September 20th to [log in to unmask]
If you have already registered for the AAG, please include your PIN with your abstract submission.
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