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Postcoloniality, care and responsibility A paper session sponsored by the DARG and WGSG Research Groups of the RGS-IBG. RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2006, 'Global social justice and environmental sustainability', 30th August - 1st September 2006, Royal Geographical Society, London. In this session we aim to explore the intersections between care, responsibility and postcoloniality to bring together research from people working on these topics from different angles - development geography, feminist geography and postcolonial geography. Responsibility and postcoloniality offer interesting, interrelated ways of understanding present day global events and relationships and are becoming central for geographers and the discipline's redefinition of itself. For instance, development geographers have for some time been arguing that the effects of global poverty spread far beyond the people who feel its weight (Echanove, 2005) and that wealthier inhabitants of global cities like London should take responsibility for the exploitation that the city now brings, and historically has brought, to provide the resources that establish and maintain its status (Massey, 2004). This is a central issue for postcolonial thinkers who are concerned with tracing how present day inequalities and responsibilities are constituted through the history of colonialism. But these responsibilities are not only recognized through economic and social linkages but are also often invoked through the emotional register. Responsibility in the postcolonial present must be then seen not only as a rational move or one that is traced through political or ethical considerations, but also one that is operationalised through global circuits of care. In this session we therefore explore the links between care, responsibility and postcoloniality. The session aims to address issues such as what responsibilities we at the end of globally spread out care chains have; how the philosophical literature on responsibility can be reworked through the lens of postcoloniality; and what the role of the 'public' is in postcolonial responsibilities of care. We want to think about how we can labour towards a responsibility in which changing global injustices (upon which academic geography too is maintained) is seen as a responsibility that results from the participation of millions of people and numerous institutions that both support and resist unjust global structures. How can this be in practice a shared responsibility, involving a recognition that we are all connected to structural processes that produce injustice, but that we are not all equally positioned in these efforts and our responsibilities are therefore not equal, not even equivalent? Finally, what routes can be employed in working towards a global ethic of care and how can this be operationalised through our ways of being, including our research methods and academic lives? Towards this we seek expressions of interest from people working in areas such as (but not restricted to): * ethics and responsibility * postcolonial responsibility * emotional geographies and care * global care chains * postcolonial research methods and responsibility * global injustice and global care: how is this operationalised in practice? * caring for the environment - a postcolonial frame * diasporas, responsibility and care We also actively encourage the use of alternative creative presentation formats, such as poetry, prose, animation and art work, however defined. Please send all submissions, using the abstract submission form at http://www.rgs.org/category.php?Page=ac2006 <http://www.rgs.org/category.php?Page=ac2006>; <http://www.rgs.org/category.php?Page=ac2006 <http://www.rgs.org/category.php?Page=ac2006>; > to one of the convenors: Clare Madge [log in to unmask] Or Pat Noxolo [log in to unmask] Or Parvati Raghuram [log in to unmask] The abstracts should be no more than 200 words. The deadline for submission of abstracts is January 17th, 2006.