** Apologies for cross-posting**
Fourth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies
1-3 July 2013, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Session Title: Emotional Impacts on/of Living with Difference
Session Convenors: Nichola Wood (University of Leeds), Gill Valentine and Lucy Jackson (University of Sheffield).
We are currently witnessing unprecedented population change across the globe during what has been described as an era of super-mobility and super-diversity. This is a product of the twin forces of the global economy and global conflicts, which have accelerated patterns of migration. Other forms of rapid population change are evident too. The historical shift from industrial society to new modernity, in which individuals are assumed to be released from traditional constraints and to have more freedom to create their own individualized biographies, choosing between a range of lifestyles and social ties, has resulted in the more open public expression of a diverse range of social identities and ways of living. In this context of super-mobility and super-diversity, Stuart Hall (1993: 361) has claimed that “the capacity to live with difference is…the coming question of the 21st century”.
Whilst social scientists have developed a range of theoretical and methodological approaches for exploring and explaining the social impacts of super-mobility and super-diversity, including works on the geographies of encounter, experiences of prejudice and new forms of urban citizenship (e.g. Amin 2002; Fortier 2008; Thrift 2005; Valentine 2008 and Wilson 2011), few of these works explicitly consider the role and significance of emotions in people’s experiences of, and attitudes towards, living with difference. Rather, the emotional and affective dimensions of encounters with, and understandings of, social difference tend to be taken-for-granted, or assumed to exist in particular forms.
This session aims to address this gap in our understanding by inviting papers which explore the role and significance of emotions in people’s experiences and understandings of living with difference. We welcome multi- and interdisciplinary papers that draw on work from any geographical context. Suggested topics to be considered include (but are not confined to):
- Emotional encounters of ‘the other’
- The emotional politics of competing rights and values
- Emotional experiences and impacts of prejudice and discrimination
- The media and emotive representations of difference
- Emotions and political activism around rights-based conflicts
- Emotions and an ethics of care/responsibility towards ‘the other’
Please send abstracts of approximately 250 words to Nichola Wood ([log in to unmask]) and Lucy Jackson ([log in to unmask]) by 10th January 2013.
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Dr. Nichola Wood
Lecturer in Critical Human Geography
School of Geography
University of Leeds
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds
LS2 9JT
United Kingdom
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