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Call for Papers: Consuming the Anthropocene (AAG 2015)

Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting
21-25 April 2015
Chicago 

Organisers: Michael K. Goodman (University of Reading) and Alexandra Sexton (King’s College London)

The following is a call for abstracts for a paper session that seeks to discuss and further develop the meanings, biopolitics and materialities of consumption in the Anthropocene.

What does it mean to consume in the Anthropocene? What will it mean to consume in the Anthropocene? This paper session looks to open initial engagements with the shifting materialities, geographies and practices of consumption in an era that is characterised by unprecedented environmental risk and socioeconomic inequalities, coupled with emergent technological and social innovation. Of particular interest is whether a new biopolitics of consumption is emerging that creates new spatial, political and economic assemblages, which in turn offer new opportunities and/or create new sites of governance for ‘doing’ consumption differently.

Building on recent writings of Castree (2014) and Rutherford & Rutherford (2013), we look to critically problematise these new ‘consuming’ sites of governance in order to further understand what debates about this era can “do for us and all those who stand to be affected by such debates” (Castree 2014).

Potential themes for this session include (but are not limited to):

·   The place of consumption (in particular, food-related consumption and eating) in the theorisations of the Anthropocene

·         Reorienting meanings and practices of consumption in light of the Anthropocene

·         New biopolitical regimes of consumption in theory and in practice

·         Resistance/radical movements and approaches to consumption

·         Post-consumption practices

We welcome abstract submissions of 250 words (max) via email to Mike ([log in to unmask]) and Alexandra ([log in to unmask]) by 25^th October 2014. Please include a title for your submission and name of author(s). All accepted contributors will then need to register for the AAG conference online at the AAG website by 31st October 2014 ahead of a session proposal deadline of 5th November 2014.

We look forward to receiving your abstracts!