 |
 |
2nd call for papers: Relational Geographies of Energy and the State The RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2016, London, 30 August - 2 September 2016. Sponsored by the Energy Geographies Research Group, RGS-IBG Session convenors: James Angel (King's College London) and Jon Phillips (King's College London) Critical scholars often situate the state within exploitative and unjust socio-ecological practices. The state can be the coercive enabler of accumulation by disposition (Harvey 1976; Robertson and Wainwright 2013; Parenti 2015) and the bureaucratic facilitator of colonial expansion (Scott 1998). At the same time, the state plays an important role in the co-ordination and distribution of resources necessary for social reproduction (London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group 1980; Harvey 2012) Yet the state is not a unified object or subject (Abrams 1988). Scholars who have approached the state relationally - drawing on a broad body of scholarship from Gramsci to Foucault and Poulantzas - have described state institutions that are constituted by - and help to reproduce - complex and contradictory social and socio-ecological processes (Jessop 1990). This session will explore the implications of relational understandings of the state for the growing field of energy geographies. If the state is understood as a set of socio-ecological processes, how and why does this matter for our understandings of the geographies and political ecologies of energy and energy transitions? If the state is constituted by socio-ecological processes, then in what ways do the socio-ecological processes of energy help produce and reproduce the state? We invite papers on a range of topics that address the place of the state - understood as a socio-ecological relation - within energy geographies. Topics could include but are not limited to: * The state and the commodification of energy and resources * The co-evolution of the state and energy infrastructures and practices * The state, energy demand and consumption * Explorations of state and/or market energy practices, logics and rationalities * The state in low-carbon energy transitions * Activist approaches to the state within energy struggles * Political ecological approaches to energy and the state * Nexus approaches to the relations of energy and the state * The state and energy within the everyday geographies of social reproduction To be considered for the session, please submit a title, author details, and an abstract of up to 250 words to both Jon Phillips ([log in to unmask]) and James Angel ([log in to unmask]) by Friday 12th February 2016. Key words: energy; the state; relational geographies; sustainability transitions References Abrams, P. 1988. "Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State." Journal of Historical Sociology 1(1): 58-89. Harvey, D. 1976. "The Marxian Theory of the State." Antipode 8(2): 80-89. ---. 2012. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso. Jessop, B. 1990. State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in Its Place. Cambridge: Polity. Labban, M. 2008. Space Oil and Capital. London: Routledge London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group. 1980. "In and Against the State." https://libcom.org/library/against-state-1979. Parenti, C. 2015. "The Environment Making State: Territory, Nature, and Value (The 2013 ANTIPODE AAG Lecture)." Antipode 47: 829-48. Robertson, M., and J.D. Wainwright. 2013. "The Value of Nature to the State." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 103: 890-905. Scott, J.C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. --------------- Jon Phillips PhD Student, Geography Department, King's College London | new paper: Sovereignty, the 'resource curse', and the limits of good governance: a political economy of oil in Ghana<http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2015.1049520>. Review of African Political Economy DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2015.1049520