Like Steve, I enjoyed the conference, its open and enabling
atmosphere, its a general lack of point-scoring and reference trumping
in the sessions I attended. The downside was that it was sometimes a
bit "liberal" (and that the word "activist" seems to being stretched
rather often to give a heroic slant to some pretty routine
activities). Like Steve, I'm becoming increasingly worried about
some of the outcomes of the "Cultural Turn".
It seems very important to me that if we are genuine about our
internationalism, the next such conference should take account of the
problems of academics from less affluent countries attending. The cost of
the fare alone was six months' salary for an Indian lecturer, meaning that
only people who could get government backing could afford to attend
(meaning that young researchers hadn't a hope). Holding a conference in,
say, an Indian university would bring down residential costs and obviously
travel for local people, but do nothing for others. It might be another idea to
keep the conference where travel costs are low for the relatively wealthy, but
to institute a fare pool and subsidise accommodation. Personally I'd
like to see it outside the affluent world but with travel subsidies
too, but I suspect that that would make it impossibly expensive
unless we were able to find (carefully approved) sponsorship.
Pam Shurmer-Smith
Dept of Geography
University of Portsmouth
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