Print

Print


*Call for papers: Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference, University
of Exeter, 2nd to 4th September 2015*



*Responsibility: Enacting care over time and space in the Anthropocence.*



This session is sponsored by the Geographies of Justice Research Group

Session Convenors:

Clare Holdsworth, School of Physical and Geographical Sciences, Keele
University.

Email: [log in to unmask]
Matt Baillie Smith, Department of Social Sciences & Languages, Northumbria
University.

Email: [log in to unmask]

Charles Z. Levkoe Geography & Environmental Studies, Wilfrid Laurier
University

Email: [log in to unmask]

Abstract:

Responsibility has become a buzzword of contemporary politics. It is David
Cameron’s ‘favourite’ word and Ed Miliband has argued for the need to
reward responsibility.  Yet the political popularity of responsibility also
renders it elusive, it is a political solution that continually shifts the
need for response to others. Inspired by the writings of Doreen Massey
geographical research on responsibility has been preoccupied with ethical
and political questions associated with connectivity and propinquity. In
particular a key question is how relationality can bring about
responsibility to those we feel close to (spatially or personally) as well
as near and distant strangers. Yet it is often easier to identify what
responsibility is not rather than what it is, and there are both empirical
and theoretical challenges in documenting how individuals respond to the
political and moral requirement to be responsible within families and
communities, as well as how this relates to global concerns. This session
will bring together papers that respond to this challenge through
considering the different ways in which responsibility is enacted in time
and space, including who and what responsibility is framed for and how
individuals negotiate competing or different notions of responsibility.

We invite submissions that explore how orientations to being responsible
shape everyday life and extend the possibility of relations to include
human-non human interactions over time and space.

This could include research on forms of voluntarism, as well as practical
and emotional support at different spatial and temporal scales.
Contributions that challenge the Anglo-centric reading of responsibility
are also encouraged to explore the meanings of relationality and
responsibility in different political, cultural and economic contexts.



Instructions for authors:

Please email contributions (Title, 200-250 word Abstract, brief biography)
or queries to Clare Holdsworth by email  [log in to unmask]

The deadline for Abstracts is *Thursday 12th February 2015*.

The format of the session will be the presentation of 4-5 selected papers
each lasting 20 minutes.