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