Call for papers:

 

 

Verticality and the Anthropocene: politics and law of the subsurface

 

RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2015

University of Exeter | September 1-4, 2015

 

Co-Organizers:

Nigel Clark, Saskia Vermeylen, Nils Markusson, Alexandra Gormally

Lancaster Environment Centre

 

In collaboration with the British Geological Survey

 

The properties and dynamics of the vertical have been intriguing geographers of late.  Gavin Bridge places the ‘vertical rupture and displacement [..] at the heart of the concept of the Anthropocene’ (Bridge 2013: 56). The rapid uptake into the social sciences of the Anthropocene idea suggests that (re)visiting the relationship between geological and social formations is timely and urgent. These issues and questions however are also manifest in the kind of challenges faced within the earth sciences, especially with regards to controversies arising out of intensifying human exploitation of the Earth’s complex and changeable subsurface. For reasons that have to do with both shortfalls in interdisciplinary communication and inherited priorities of the social sciences themselves, we are currently short on theories and methods for thinking constructively about the composition, properties and dynamics of the earth.

 

This session seeks to examine the interface between human designs on the subsurface (enacted or imagined) and the malleability of geological formations under the forces of both natural processes and human technology.  We are interested in theoretical contributions at this interface, across a diversity of temporal (historic, futuristic), spatial and thematic angles.

 

More specifically our attention is drawn towards issues that are closely aligned with the accelerated utilisation of the onshore and offshore subsurface (see Bridge, 2009; Bebbington, 2012). The question of property is often pivotal, arising with the development of (‘alternative’ or ‘unconventional’) energy sources such as geothermal energy and shale gas, but also with the growing interest to use the subsurface as a storage space for energy and energy-related waste. Pertinent examples are the disposal of radioactive waste, and the storage of natural gas and carbon dioxide.  With the latter two examples, the ownership of the pore space emerges as a geo-legal issue. These dynamic spaces are characterised by conceptual ambiguity as they are shaped by both geology and human interference (moving fluids, changing pressures), illustrating both the complexity and the importance of property discourses in sub-surface governance.

 

In an era of increasing resource scarcity and environmental concerns, a very different range of actors are making demands on the use of the subsurface for multiple purposes, at greater depths and varying time scales.  These new demands raise new questions of governance.

 

In this session we are seeking to build on the work of Bruce Braun (2000), Gavin Bridge (2013) and Stuart Elden (2013) on how the verticality of power relations, among other things, extends questions of sovereignty, territoriality and property from extracting to injecting/inserting. In Territory, now in 3D, Bridge raises the issue of vertical geopolitics and reciprocity between surface and subsurface in the extractive industry.  Emerging jurisprudence suggests that the relationship between geological layers, geophysical structures and property might be different for extracting and inserting. We are inviting papers from across geography, science and technology studies and critical legal studies, addressing for example:

 

• The Anthropocene as the intensification of surface-subsurface relations
• Vertical/volumetric territory and subsurface governance
• Practices of visualising and mapping the subsurface
• Law and the subsurface: property, severance, jurisdiction and alienation
• Extractive industries and the commercialisation of subsurface storage space
• Political mobilisation and deliberation around use of the subsurface
• Genealogies and histories of subsurface governance
• Social, cultural and aesthetic imaginaries of the subsurface
• Ontologies of strata, geopower and deep time
• Methodologies for engaging with the geologic
• Subsurface issues and social science-earth science conversations

 

Bebbington, A (2012) `Underground political ecologies’, Geoforum 43: 1152 -1162.

Braun, B. (2000) `Producing vertical territory: Geology and governmentality in late Victorian Canada’, Cultural Geographies 7 (7): 7- 46. 

Bridge, G. (2009) `The Hole World: scales and spaces of extraction’. New Geographies 2, 43–48.

Bridge, G. (2013) ‘Territory, now in 3D’. Political Geography 34: 55-57.

Elden, S. (2013) ‘Secure the volume: Vertical geopolitics and the depth of power’. Political geography 34: 35-51.

 

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to Alexandra Gormally ([log in to unmask]) or Nigel Clark ([log in to unmask] )- by Monday 9th February 2015. Authors of selected papers will be notified by Friday 13th February 2015.