Apologies for cross-postings…

 

Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual Conference, London, 31st August-2nd September 2016

 

Session title: Children, Young People and Nexus Thinking: food-water-energy and everyday geographies

Session sponsorship: Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group

Session convenors:

Peter Kraftl, University of Birmingham ([log in to unmask])

Sophie Hadfield-Hill, University of Birmingham ([log in to unmask])

John Horton, The University of Northampton ([log in to unmask])

Ben Coles, University of Leicester ([log in to unmask])

 

 

Session abstract:

Nexus thinking offers opportunities to consider the inter-relations and inter-dependencies between the vital components that constitute life-itself. Recently, nexus thinking has been mobilised to consider the entanglement of food, water and energy in especially urban locales. This session aims to consider both what might be the specific implications of the food-water-energy nexus for childhood research, and, more broadly, whether and how childhood scholars might take up the challenge of nexus thinking. On the first point, it is clear that children’s geographers and others have led often critical debates about food consumption practices, anti-obesity policies, Education for Sustainability, familial energy practices and the everyday interdependencies that make up domestic life in diverse contexts. However, with few exceptions, childhood scholars have tended to treat food, water and energy as separate entities. Moreover, despite ground-breaking research into the embodied and everyday experiences of food, water or energy, there is little research that examines whether or how children experience these three resources together – as a nexus. This is particularly problematic given that, on the one hand, children are in many contexts key producers and consumers of nexus resources, and that, on the other, much research on the nexus tends to focus on larger scale urban systems: on metabolic flows through cities, and on urban justice, often at abstract levels. Childhood scholars – particularly children’s geographers – could be particularly well-placed to theorise and exemplify everyday, embodied, emplaced experiences of the nexus.

Beyond food-water-energy, however, childhood scholars might develop and extend nexus thinking in particular and significant directions. For instance, they might examine childhood as a nexus, asking how doing so might progress contemporary theories of childhood. We wonder: what might be the opportunities for extending emergent more-than-social, hybrid or biosocial theorisations of childhood through a nexus frame (and especially through the example of food-water-energy)? How might nexus thinking enable intra-active forms of inquiry that see children produced through multi-scalar discourses, embodied performances, affects and materialities? What might the implications be for thinking through longstanding questions about rights, agency, voice, social action and social (re)production? Alternatively, childhood scholars might explore – empirically and conceptually – the operation of other forms of nexus in and through children’s lives, beyond food-water-energy. What, for instance, are the key operational nexuses that exist in children’s lives across diverse geographical contexts? How are resources like technology, housing, education, play, or greenspace positioned?

The session will also seek to engage participants in critical debates about the particularities and limits of nexus thinking. On the one hand, we encourage papers that delineate the specific contributions that childhood scholars might have to nexus thinking: are there forms of nexus that are particular to children, and/or what is the role played by children in producing particular kinds of nexus? On the other hand, even if nexus thinking encourages experimental (re)combinations of previously isolated components, what are the limits to these forms of complexity – methodologically, politically, conceptually? Can nexus thinking enable childhood scholars to extend their work beyond the local scale (or beyond scale itself), as some commentators argue we must?

We invite abstracts for papers that respond to the above (or other) questions about children, young people and nexus thinking. Authors may wish to tie their papers to one or more of the following themes, in and across the Minority Global North and Majority Global South:

·         The food-water-energy nexus

·         Nexuses beyond (or including) food-water-energy

·         The possibilities of nexus thinking for (re)theorising childhood and youth

·         Interdisciplinary research and nexus thinking

·         Nexus thinking in, and beyond, (Education for) Sustainability

·         Childhood at (and after) different geographical scales

·         Everyday experiences, emotions, affects and embodiments of particular nexuses

·         Methodological innovations for witnessing particular nexuses in childhoods

·         Childhood as a nexus, thought particularly through and beyond intra-active theorisations of discourse/materiality

·         Nexus thinking for urban, rural, and/or ‘other’ childhoods

·         Children’s (im)mobilities as a nexus of discursive, material and embodied processes

·         Participatory research as a nexus practice

·         Challenges of nexus thinking to ethical, political and legal (especially rights-based) standards in working with children and young people

·         Possibilities heralded by nexus thinking for (re)considering children’s roles in social (re)production, social action, and ‘development’

·         Conceptualising nexuses, assemblages, spatialities, networks and systems

 

Submitting abstracts: authors should submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Sophie Hadfield-Hill ([log in to unmask]) by 5th February 2016.

 

Best wishes,


Peter

 

 

Professor Peter Kraftl

 

Chair in Human Geography,

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences,

University of Birmingham,

Edgbaston,

Birmingham,

B15 2TT,

United Kingdom

 

Telephone: 0044 (0)121 4145524 

Homepage: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/gees/kraftl-peter.aspx

Twitter: @peterkraftl

Editor, Area: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1475-4762 
Editor, Children's Geographies: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/14733285.asp

****Now out in paperback: Geographies of Alternative Education: http://www.policypress.co.uk/display.asp?k=9781447300502

****New book: Children's Emotions in Policy and Practice: http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/childrens-emotions-in-policy-and-practice-matej-blazek/?isb=9781137415592