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Dear all, Apologies for cross-postings. Please circulate to others who might be interested. Thanks! Call for papers 2010 Annual Meeting of the AAG, Washington, DC, April 14-18 SPECULATING ON EVERYDAY FUTURES RETHINKING THE SPACE-TIMES OF DECISION-MAKING Organizers: Gordon Clark, Derek McCormack & Tim Schwanen School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford Sponsored by: Economic Geography Specialty Group, Urban Geography Specialty Group Since the emergence of behavioural geography, decision-making processes have been of interest to economic, urban and transport geographers studying location and other choices (Golledge and Stimson, 1997). Much of this work understands decision-making as a contemplative activity by sovereign, (boundedly) rational human agents. While extremely useful and insightful, the narrowly cognitivist model of thinking that underpins this understanding of decision-making is based has been the subject of a growing critique (e.g. Strauss 2009). Furthermore, by drawing on developments in a range of disciplines, geographers are developing increasingly sophisticated ways of conceptualising how the spaces and times of thinking, and therefore also decision-making, are layered by processes of memory, affect, and emotion. The aim of this session is to explore possibilities for a renewed and expanded understanding of the process and practices through which decision-making takes place as an everyday activity. We invite conceptual and/or empirical contributions that explore and make explicit the complexity of decision-making with regard to location, purchase and other kinds of ‘choices’ in a range of spheres of activity and intervention. Thematically, the questions this session seeks to explore include, but are not limited to, the following: • How might we conceptualise decision-making? Upon what theories – philosophical, sociological, psychological, or otherwise – might we draw when thinking about what makes a decision? • How does decision making take-place? What are the technologies, techniques, materials, and artefacts that enable and facilitate the process of decision making? Who is involved and in what ways? • Where does decision making take-place? Is decision-making defined by certain privileged locations, or can we trace its distributed nature across and between actors and locations? Is decision making a site-specific or relation-specific activity? • When does decision making take-place? Is decision making instantaneous, a flash of inspirational insight, or a slow, incremental process of leaning into a situation or event? How does decision making involve and take account of affective processes such as anticipation and expectation? How does decision-making fold present, past, and future together? What is the role of virtual ‘unknown-unknowns’ in the practices of making decisions? • What is the value of indecision? What does it enable or facilitate? How might failure to decide allow things to happen? • Researching decision-making. How might we account for the practices, spaces, and times of decision-making? In what ways might we investigate how decisions are narrated, performed, and enacted? Abstracts (of no more than 250 words) and expressions of interest should be submitted to Derek McCormack ([log in to unmask]) or Tim Schwanen ([log in to unmask]). The deadline for the submission of abstracts in response to this call for papers is October 15 in order to allow sufficient time to organize the session(s).