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The following session is sponsored by the Disability Speciality Group:
Call for Papers: The normalcy of difference
Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), February 24–28, New York, 2012
Organiser: Jayne Sellick (Durham University)
This session aims to explore the normalcy and/or acceptance of difference by focusing on disability, (mental) health, impairment and chronic illness and pain. Papers may consider these and/or other embodied differences by addressing conceptual, empirical and/or methodological work.
The normalcy of difference can be framed by drawing from various perspectives and thinking through new embodied geographies of inclusion (Parr, 2008). These perspectives have drawn from the breadth of bodies represented through “multiple material, lived and imagined differences” (Crooks and Chouinard, 2006: 346); while more recent body-object (Bissell, 2008) and body-landscape (Macpherson, 2010) relations refer to the nonrepresentational.
Papers may focus on:
· The processes, practices and relationships that exist between, across and through these differences, object(s) and landscapes in space(s) and over time(s);
· Conceptualising difference by focusing on the (non)representational and thinking through difference as a system, a set of practices, a relationship, kinds of embodiment,
interactions with the built environment, frames of mind (Garland-Thompson, 2004), an identity politics, an everyday experience, an assemblage;
· Historiographies of difference and the role of space and time in accepting difference;
· Methodological approaches to embodied difference and the role of participants in the research process;
· The role of power relations in acceptance; the space and time of acceptance; the embodied difference of acceptance;
· The potential of individual and collective action to (re)produce the (in)visibility of embodied difference;
· The role of borders/boundaries in feminist/empowering approaches to difference as a form of individual/collective action;
· Spatio-temporalities drawn from empirical work
Please send proposed titles and abstracts (no more than 250 words) to Jayne Sellick ([log in to unmask]) by September 25th 2011. Please feel free to discuss any potential ideas or ask questions.
References
Bissell, D. (2008). "Comfortable bodies: sedentary affects." Environment and Planning A 40(7): 1697.
Crooks, V. A. and V. Chouinard (2006). "An embodied geography of disablement: Chronically ill women's struggles for enabling places in spaces of health care and daily life." Health & Place 12(3): 345-352.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2004). Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory. New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press.
Macpherson, H. (2010). "Non Representational Approaches to Body–Landscape Relations." Geography Compass 4(1): 1-13.
Parr, H. (2008). Mental health and social space : towards inclusionary geographies? Oxford, Blackwell.
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Best wishes,
Jayne Sellick
PhD Researcher
Geographies of Disability and Health
Department of Geography
Science Laboratories
Durham University
South Road
Durham
DH1 3LE
Blog: http://www.disidentities.com
Tel: +44 (0) 7757 838 741
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/J_Sellick
Web: www.durham.ac.uk/geography
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