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This is the second call. Apologies for cross-posting. AAG Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, April 17-21, 2007 Call for papers LANDSCAPES OF FLEXIBILITY Organisers: Stefan Buzar, University of Oxford ([log in to unmask]) and Marianna Pavlovskaya, Hunter College - CUNY ([log in to unmask]) Sponsored by: Urban Geography; Geographical Perspectives on Women; Economic Geography specialty groups The regimes of "flexible specialisation" and "flexible accumulation" have emerged in the context of capitalist globalisation and technological advances in information and communications. Economic, social, and control networks span continents, while flows of bodies, goods, capital, and information connect and transform places across the globe. These contradictory processes have been accompanied by the flexibilisation of production processes, work and employment, citizenship, international regulations, regional and local economies, education and leisure, as well as the emergence of the "flexible bodies" (to use Emily Martin's words) and "flexible households" and family arrangements. The growing perception of the body as adaptable and fluid has been mirrored by analogous developments at the level of home and building design. Despite its presence in such a wide variety of scales and contexts, the notion of "flexibility" per se remains under-theorised within geography. It remains unclear how different social agents - individuals, households, agencies, firms, institutions, buildings, money - shape space and place by being or becoming "flexible"; in other words, "possessing or acquiring the ability to quickly respond to changed external circumstances". Although some of the key geographical implications of flexible accumulation have received attention within the literature (e.g. work by David Harvey), the kinds of spatial orderings and relations that might arise as a result of the joint flexibilisation of economy, work, employment, households, bodies, demography, culture, architecture, etc. remain open to investigation. Expanding on some of the ideas about the "flexible household" and social reproduction from the last year's AAG, this session seeks to explore the multiple ways in which human and non-human agents articulate flexibility in space. We welcome papers that explore the territorial networks, paths and patterns associated with the rise of adaptable and elastic behaviours. Research with a geographical focus outside North America and/or Western Europe is particularly welcome, as the socio-spatial implications of flexibility in such contexts have been especially overlooked. Papers could deal with any one the following topics: + a critical view of mainstream conceptualisations of flexibility; + emerging spaces of flexibility; + the socio-spatial reproduction of flexibility through everyday life; + regimes and modes of territorial organisation associated with flexible work, local economic development, household behaviour, etc. + urban socio-economic "flexibilisation" as a process; "flexible urbanism" as a concept + contradictions of flexibity + technology and flexible cities + what does urban flexibility mean to different groups of actors? + how does flexibility interact with class, gender, and race? Papers on other related topics are also welcome. Please contact Stefan Buzar ([log in to unmask]) or Marianna Pavlovskaya ([log in to unmask]) if you are interested in giving a paper, but no later than the 30th of September.