RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, London, 27-29 August 2014
Vertical Worlds
Organisers: Andrew Harris (University College London) and Richard Baxter (Queen Mary, University of London)
Sponsored by the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group and Urban Geography Research Group.
Recent geographical scholarship has been marked by new attention to vertical dimensions: ups and downs, heights and depths, and spheres and volumes. However, despite important new insights on the politics of space and territory, there remains an analytical
emphasis on security and segregation, and strategies of containment and control in much of this vertical turn. This session retains an interest in how a vertical focus contests flattened imaginaries within the social sciences, but aims to explore a wider world of
vertical geographies. It develops a broader array of conceptual ideas, empirical forms and ethnographic engagements around the spatial entanglements of three-dimensions. By investigating a range of vertical worlds – such as mines, high-rises, bridges, farms,
gardens, submarines, cable-cars, airplanes, acrobatics and climbing – the session opens up a more diverse, theoretically informed and cosmopolitan agenda for understanding and researching verticality.
General themes might include, but are not limited to:
• Cultural representations of verticality, e.g. in films and novels
• Everyday vertical life
• Theorising the vertical-horizontal relationship
• Vertical architectures and modes of transport
• Non-urban vertical forms
• Verticality and nature
• New comparative geographies and histories of verticality