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Dear all I know Australia is a long way off for most critters, but the 2009 conference is in Cairns this year and I don't think I've seen any info about it on this forum. Here are details of the conference in general, but I have also pasted details about a session I am organising (on Re-imagining the Tropics) below. http://www.iag.org.au/conferences-events/iag-conference-cairns-2009/ Hope to see some of you there. Cheers, Lisa ------------------------------------------ *Re-imagining the tropics: Sites and networks of knowledge IAG Conference Session, James Cook University, 27-30 September 2009 Session organisers: Lisa Law, James Cook Uni & Katherine Gibson, ANU * The terms ‘tropics’ and ‘tropicality’ are re-emerging in scholarly debate across a range of academic disciplines (geography, history, anthropology). In Euro-American research in particular, there has been a return to the archives of ‘tropical geography’ as conceptualised throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and formalised in the immediate post-WWII period. Some have focused attention on the formation of tropical knowledges in the colonial and post-WWII archives (eg Arnold 1998, 2000, 2006; Driver 2004; Bowd and Clayton 2005), while others chart the circulation of tropical knowledges through cinema (Law et al 2007) and academic books and journals (Power and Sidaway 2004; Grundy-Warr et al 2003). Some scholars examine how tropical knowledges shape historical and contemporary practices of fieldwork (Driver and Martins 2005; Corbridge and Mawdsley 2003), and Australian researchers are beginning to interrogate planning policies for the contemporary tropical city (Luckman et al forthcoming). Drawing on these ideas, but in a postcolonial context of multiculturalism and global connectedness, this session aims to: · Re-cast the tropics not as ‘geography’ but as ‘discourse’ of knowledge and power · Examine the texts, institutions, technologies and practices that help define and produce tropical regions as knowable geographies · Consider the tropics as a network rather than bounded geography We welcome papers with these general themes, as well as those that more broadly articulate with debates about ‘tropicality’. Please contact Lisa Law ([log in to unmask]) and/or Katherine Gibson ([log in to unmask]) if you are interested in presenting in the session. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ School of Earth and Environmental Sciences James Cook University PO Box 6811 Cairns QLD 4870 Australia Tel +61-7-4042-1389 Fax +61-7-4042-1284