Call for papers
RGS/IBG conference
London, 30 August – 1 September 2006
The Participatory Geographies Working Group is supporting eight sessions in 2006 encompassing a wide range of themes. If you are interested in taking part, please contact the individual session convenors, and send final abstracts to them for approval by 24th January 2006. Further details about each session can be found below. Many welcome alternative presentation formats, please contact the convenors to discuss.
Participatory ethics for human geography
(Rachel Pain [log in to unmask] and Farhana Sultana [log in to unmask])
Spaces of participation
(Mike Kesby mike.kesby@st-andrews, Duncan Fuller [log in to unmask], Larch Maxey [log in to unmask], Dorothea Kleine [log in to unmask])
Making autonomous geographies: inspiring and participating in social change from inside and outside the academy
(Paul Chatterton [log in to unmask], Jenny Pickerill [log in to unmask], Stuart Hodkinson [log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask], Michael Leyshon [log in to unmask]
Participatory approaches to community cohesion and integration research
(Louise Waite [log in to unmask] and Anja Rudiger [log in to unmask])
Participatory techniques showcase
(Jay Mistry [log in to unmask] and Andrea Berardi [log in to unmask]
Left Geographies
(Ugo Rossi [log in to unmask] and Justin Beaumont [log in to unmask])
Participatory Geographical Information Systems
Joint session with GIScRG
(Christine Dunn [log in to unmask] and Rachel Pain [log in to unmask])
‘Alternative’ this, ‘alternative’ that…: Interrogating alterity
Joint session with EGRG
(Duncan Fuller [log in to unmask]), Andy Jonas [log in to unmask] and Roger Lee [log in to unmask])
More details:
Participatory ethics for human geography
Convenors: Rachel Pain (Durham) and Farhana Sultana (Minnesota)
[log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]
One of the remits of the Participatory Geographies Working Group (RGS) is to explore the possibility of a code of ethics for human geography research. This is at a time when both conceptual debates about ethical geography and institutional ethical clearance procedures are expanding rapidly. The two often seem at odds. This session aims to discuss current tensions and opportunities connected to research ethics, from the standpoint of participatory geographies. We invite papers on the subject of ethics from those who are engage in, or who are willing to engage with, participatory research.
Growing numbers of geographers are developing and deploying more participatory ethics with research respondents/participants in different ways. What do these participatory ethics look like? How are ethics negotiated with respondents/participants? What power relations and hierarchies need to be considered in doing research? Do respondents have different ethical priorities to those we take for granted as ‘good practice’, and what issues does this raise for research? What are the ways in which participatory ethics can be operationalised in research practice? What are the geographies of participatory ethics? Are they sensitive to, and variable between, different research contexts? How does doing fieldwork/research in developing country contexts differ from developed country contexts?
Discussions about ethical and moral practice are also taking place elsewhere in human geography. How do these debates relate to participatory ethics? At the same time, constraints on research are tightening as a result of the demands of ethical clearance from universities and the institutions that fund and control research. What experiences are there of balancing what can be very different ‘ethical’ demands? What are the prospects for a professional code of ethics for geography – would it be enabling or further constraining? How might we address the challenges for research which arise from such codes/guidelines?
Spaces of participation
Convenors: Mike Kesby (St Andrews), Duncan Fuller (Northumbria), Larch Maxey (Sansea), Dorothea Kleine (London School of Economics)
mike.kesby@st-andrews [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]
'Participation' is gaining increasing prominence in social research and social policy. But what are the spatial dimensions of participation - what difference does geography make to our understandings and experiences of participation (Cornwall 2004; Kesby 2005)? Interest in these questions is growing outside human geography, and while our discipline as a whole is rather late in turning its focus towards participation, geographers are well placed to make an important contribution to the debate. This session encourages the exploration of approaches, styles and technologies (including participation via webconference) aimed to widen and deepen participation within the fora of international conferences. In this session we are interested to address questions of how space, spatiality, context and scale affect participatory practice. We want to discuss how a sensitivity to geographical issues better helps explain how, why and were participation works and/or fails, and to identify a geographical perspective might help surmount existing limitations and improve participatory praxis. Finally we are interested to explore how geographical concerns be brought into participatory work and how geographical analysis might be cultivated amongst participants themselves.
Papers are therefore welcomed from all parts of the academy, and/or from those actively involved in the creation of participatory spaces and futures, in whatever form. Participants might like to consider the following question and themes:
· How do participatory spaces, places, contexts and arenas work, and how can we make them work better?
· Participation is increasingly becoming institutionalised. What are the new institutionalised spaces of participation like and what have their effects been?
· How might participation best be conceptualised in spatial terms?
· To what extent are participatory approaches embedded in space and place, how does that affect the sustainability of participation and how can we facilitate the distanciation of participatory praxis beyond the boundaries of carefully managed participatory arenas?
· To what extent and with what consequences, are particular participatory events/processes situated and located within particular institutional and social contexts?
· To what extend is PAR space 'paradoxical', i.e. beyond the dominant powers that constitute everyday spaces, so enabling impossible behaviours and unthinkable thoughts, yet at the same time itself constituted by potentially dominating powers?
· Does "The new tyranny" critique mean that participatory spaces are inevitably spaces of externally imposed discipline and power and even if they are, does this necessarily mean that they can never be spaces for empowerment, consciencisation or action?
· Does the recently proposed taxonomy of 'invited' versus 'popular' participatory spaces provide a useful way to conceptualize different kinds of participatory arenas?
· How can various new and old arenas of participation be linked and connected in productive ways and how might this address the critiques that accuse advocates of participation of limiting themselves to the local scale?
· Geographers believe that spatiality and politics of scale are tremendously important issues for social analysis, but how can be bring these and other geographical concepts into participatory projects with which we are involved in ways that make sense and have utility for ordinary people?
· How can conferences (like the RGS-IBG Annual Conf.) become more inclusive? What roles (if any) can new information and communication technologies play in broadening participation to those who cannot attend in person? Could conferences be structured, timed, located, and otherwise organised in ways which increase participation?
Making autonomous geographies: inspiring and participating in social change from inside and outside the academy
Convenors: Paul Chatterton (Leeds), Jenny Pickerill (Leicester), Stuart Hodkinson (Leeds), Michael Leyshon (Exeter)
[log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
Many of us are committed to social change; in our workplaces, communities and on the streets. Since the late 1990s, many geographers have embraced the normative turn, proposing and promoting possible alternative worlds, often standing together with social movements, trade unions, community groups, progressive non governmental organisations and those in the alter/anti capitalist movements. The notion of autonomy - literally to legislate for oneself - has increasingly become a much discussed theme here; a desire for freedom through connection, self-management, mutual aid and solidarity. Many have taken as their inspiration visible global moments and groups like the Zapatistas, the landless workers movement in Brazil, the summit-stoppers of Seattle and Prague, the World Social Forum and so on. Equally important have been more mundane or everyday resistances – for example organising workplace or community meetings, opening social centres, supporting asylum seekers, engaging in self-education or developing local food systems. Importantly, it is the potent blend of these spectacular protest mobilisations with everyday resistance that gives the movement towards autonomy its creativity, energy and transformatory potential.
This session exists on the boundaries of the academy and so brings those inside and outside of universities together for dialogue and discussion about the tactics, strategies, successes and pitfalls of working towards social change. Hence we welcome academics and non academics alike, and encourage presenters to use a variety of styles (video, games, music, talks, interventions, web sites, images) in order to generate discussion and interaction. The session will be based around a larger number of shorter interventions of around 10 minutes leaving time for questions and discussion.
Questions which participants should address include, but are not limited to, include:
Participatory approaches to community cohesion and integration research
Convenors: Louise Waite, University of Leeds and Anja Rudiger, Refugee Council
[log in to unmask] [log in to unmask])
Multicultural Britain is facing a shift in discourse and policy from race equality to immigrant integration and community cohesion. The race riots of 2001, tensions in asylum dispersal areas, the emergence of ‘home-grown’ terrorism, competition over public services and sustained levels of immigration have catapulted the terms cohesion and integration into the public discourse and prompted academics and policy makers into a deeper exploration of the exact meanings of these terms, including their relation to structural determinants as well as practical initiatives in local contexts. Community cohesion and integration are complex and contested terms that variously invoke ideas of social connections, attachment, belonging, inclusion, acculturation and equality. Much has been written and researched around these areas, yet there is an absence of knowledge about how participatory community-based approaches to research can contribute to understanding cohesion and integration as well as strengthen these aspects of communities as part of the research process itself.
This session will bring together those working both within and outside of universities to explore and discuss participatory approaches to community cohesion and integration research. We are particularly interested in research with communities that are characterised by change and flux within their population compositions and consequent reactions to such changes. This will include those working with refugee and asylum seeking communities, but also communities that are changing due to the arrival of other individuals and groups, such as new economic migrants and mobile groups such as gypsy-travellers.
Questions which participants should address include, but are not limited to, are:
Participatory techniques showcase
(Convenors: Andrea Berardi and Jay Mistry)
[log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]
In recent years the development of participatory techniques for use in collaborative research with communities has gathered pace. Geographers have made specific contributions to participatory methodologies (such as new forms of mapping and land use/landscape analysis), as well as contributing to the development of more generic techniques for participatory research, analysis, dissemination and action.
In this hands-on session, we welcome presenters who want to show, share and discuss innovative participatory techniques which they are using or plan to use. Following the principle of learning through doing, presenters will use techniques with the audience for the purposes of gathering feedback, sparking ideas, sharing past experience and generating discussion around what works and what doesn't in participatory research procedures.
Offers of presentations are therefore welcome from academics and non-academics which focus on an aspect of participatory research at any stage, from generating research questions with participants, through data collection and collaborative analysis to co-presenting and disseminating the outputs of research.
Left Geographies
Convenors: Ugo Rossi (University L'Orientale of Naples) and Justin Beaumont (University of Groningen, The Netherlands)
[log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]
A recent intervention by Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift in Antipode has sparked a lively and still developing discussion among geographers about the present and the future of the Left in geographical research. Many authors have already responded or are in the process of responding to their intervention in scholarly events and gatherings or through journal articles. These responses discuss the ideas and the cultural and political sensibilities that should characterise a Left approach to geographical studies, or, to put it another way, a geographical approach to Left thinking and practice. Little attention, however, has so far been paid to the actual practices of contemporary Left geographers at the intersection of theory, politics and concrete experiences.
Conference participants are encouraged to submit papers that aim at theoretical enrichment and empirical advance through paper presentations and discussion in relation to one or more of the following sets of questions:
1) Theory: Which theories are relevant and appropriate for upholding a Left geography? And how have these changed over time?
2) Positions: How do Left geographers position themselves within the discipline as a field of power? How has this positioning evolved and transformed over the last decades?
3) Policy: How do Left geographers position themselves in relation to and deal with policy concerns in the context of wider issues policy and political relevance in their work?
4) Public Geography: Is there such a thing as public geography today, as there was once in the past? What is the actual and possible role of geographers on the Left as public intellectuals in contemporary societies?
5) Gauche Plurielle: Can we speak of a singular geography of the Left or about many Left geographies? What are the differences between radical and oppositional Left geographies, on the one hand, and those more closely located on the mainstream political Left? And what about the Left geographies of ethnic and cultural minorities and other identity groups?
6) Left and Right: What distinguishes a Left geography from a Right geography and does the binary opposition still hold? Is Left Geography a synonym of Critical Geography?
7) Substantive issues: To what extent Is Left Geography still motivated by a political desire to reduce poverty, mitigate social, economic, political and environmental injustices and for wider democratization? What other issues are important?
Participatory Geographical Information Systems
Joint with GIScRG
(Convenors: Christine Dunn & Rachel Pain)
[log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]
Following critiques in the 1990s around the social implications and theoretical assumptions of Geographical Information Systems, recent years have witnessed a shift towards more ‘socially aware’ approaches to GIS applications. These newer framings of GIS draw on various forms of community participation and give privilege to local and indigenous geographical knowledge as well as to more formal spatial data. Alongside these developments there has been a recent surge of interest in participatory research approaches in Geography with contributions both to theory and practice.
In bringing together researchers who are developing bottom-up approaches to GIS this session aims to consider some of the challenges faced in attempting to represent multiple geographical perspectives through a visual information technology. The session also provides an opportunity to explore some of the different manifestations of what has been variously labelled as, inter alia, Participatory GIS, Public Participation GIS and Community-integrated GIS.
Papers are invited from those working with participatory approaches to spatial issues, however loosely or tightly coupled to GIS technology. Papers are welcome on specific applications as well as on broader conceptual themes around participation and GIS.
‘Alternative’ this, ‘alternative’ that…: Interrogating alterity
Joint with EGRG
(Convenors: Duncan Fuller, Andy Jonas, Roger Lee)
[log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]
In reflecting and celebrating the burgeoning interest in alternative economic spaces, this session is focused on bringing together critical analyses of alterity from across the social sciences and beyond. The intention is to advance understanding of exactly what alternative economic spaces are, how they are formed, what difficulties and problems they face, how they can be sustained, and how academics can help in their proliferation. The session will explore diverse themes underpinning the proliferation of local economies, such as tensions and relations with the mainstream economy, alterity and autonomy, social regulation versus self-regulation, ownership and control, the social and economic sustainability of alterity, alterity and otherness, authenticity and morality, ‘alternative’ knowledges, policy, participation and praxis, etc. Papers are therefore welcomed from all parts of the academy, and/or from those actively involved in the creation of alternative spaces and futures, in whatever form.