The Nordic Geographers' Meeting takes place in Reykjavik from 11-14 June 2013. Please find below our CFP. Closing date for abstract submissions is 31 January 2013 (http://conference.hi.is/ngm2013/call-for-papers/). However, we would like to encourage potential contributors to contact the session organisers before 20 December 2012 (email to [log in to unmask]).

Session 21 – Invasive life and biosecurity conflict
 
The globalized and interconnected world has necessarily brought once separated lifeforms into contact at an accelerated pace. Many plant and animal species are now found in places where they have appeared only recently. Some of these new ecologies have their own nonhuman history, many others have grown out of decidedly human interference. Only half a century ago, plants and animals were deliberately brought to new places in order to improve the existing environment, to make it more useful or less vulnerable to physical or chemical forces. Other species were introduced for the pure joy of having them to look at. Nowadays, these changes are seen as problematic. Many countries and supranational political bodies such as the EU have their own regulations and institutions in dealing with invasive life, often related to the notion of biosecurity (Barker 2008; Everts & Füller 2011). At the same time, the managing and often killing of once welcomed species is increasingly challenged by interest groups and ordinary people alike. These conflicts over space and the right to certain territories/ecologies provide a key lens to moral problems stemming from global interconnectedness.

For this session, we invite papers that deal empirically and/or theoretically with the aforementioned issues, the conflicts and controversies over biosecurity interventions into invasive life very broadly defined, the moral dilemma posed by the mobilities of bacteria, fungi, plants or animals or any other form of life.

Session organisers:
Jonathan Everts, University of Bayreuth, Germany
Karl Benediktsson, University of Iceland