ESRS Congress Florence, 29 July - 1st August 2013
Rural resilience and vulnerability: the rural as locus of solidarity and conflict in times of crisis
Abstracts of papers are invited for a Working Group entitled:
Bio-Economies and Eco-Economies – Contestation, Convergence or Co-constitutive emergence? New Theory, Methods and Politics for New and Resilient Rural Economies.
Organizers:
Hugh Campbell (Centre for Sustainability, University of Otago, NZ); [log in to unmask]
Lawrence Kitchen (Wales Rural Observatory, Cardiff University, UK); [log in to unmask]
Richard Le Heron (School of Environment, University of Auckland, NZ); [log in to unmask]
Terry Marsden (Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, UK); [log in to unmask]
Jonathan Radcliffe (Wales Rural Observatory, Cardiff University, UK); [log in to unmask]
Key words: Bio-economy; Eco-economy; Rural resilience; Rural development; Emergence
Following a successful Working Group at the IRSA World Congress in Lisbon, this Working Group will be co-hosted by researchers from Cardiff University, UK (Sustainable Places Research Institute and Wales Rural Observatory), and the Biological Economies research group, New Zealand (Universities of Auckland, Canterbury and Otago and Massey University). It examines new theoretical and methodological approaches to the understanding of rural economies developing in different contexts. Specifically, it explores different perceptions of and approaches to understanding the emerging phenomena of the bio-economy and the eco- economy, the nature of claims being made in their names, and attempts to enact resilience in rural regions by their independent or interdependent development.
Bio-economic activities merge areas such as medicine, nutrition, agriculture, industrial biotechnology, biomass and bio-fuels, biotechnology, genomics, chemical engineering, and enzyme technology. Core features of the eco-economy may include multifunctional agriculture, forestry and fisheries, and other land-based and service enterprises, more rooted in local ecologies, territory and place-based initiatives.
Arguably, rather than working with nature and environment, many bio-economic activities “transform nature at a fundamental and genetic level and….seek separation from and deeper control over nature.” (Kitchen and Marsden, 2011). Moreover, the bio-economy’s perceived corporate control and global reach are in tension with the community and regional aspirations of the eco-economy. However, recent developments in both the eco-economy and the bio-economy have witnessed potential convergence of the two conceptual trains. Examples include advances in energy crops; biotechnology converting agricultural waste into useable energy; and local, regional and global linkages established through Payments for Environmental Systems. Key drivers of this eco/bio-economic intermingling are resource depletion, food security, upscaling of agri-food exports from nations embedded in free trade agreements, the quest for alternative sources of energy, and the perceived need to build resilience in rural regions.
The Working Group invites theoretically or empirically-based papers that explore the eco-economy, the bio-economy and the relationships between them. Potential subjects include:
• Rural resilience in a globalising food system increasingly defined by multilateral trade agreements.
• New developments, entrepreneurial activities and applications in rural regions.
• Re-scaling of policy in the face of new issues.
• Contradictions, ambiguities and tensions between the eco-economy and the bio-economy.
• The ways in which new approaches like Transition Theory, ANT, Materialities, Convention Theory and theories
of Utopias have changed both the objects of study and the methodological approaches of researchers
interested in rural or regional economies.
• Ideas of governance, experimentation, innovation and connectivity in the context of multiple relational
networks of society/economy/nature.
• Emerging objects of study like technologies of governance/audit, metrologies, and the idea of provenance,
and economic rent.
• Reworked understandings of established objects of study like innovation, regional development and branding.
The Working Group will be organized around presentations and discussions of a series of short papers on these and related themes. Participants should prepare to present for up to 15 minutes and then take questions on their paper. Dedicated discussion sessions will be included.
Abstracts (max 400 words) of papers should be submitted by 1st March 2013 via the conference website: http://florenceesrs2013.com/.
