Call for Papers:
American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, 10-14 April 2018, New Orleans.
Session Organizers:
Karen Frank (New
Jersey Institute of Technology
Tim Edensor (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Materiality and Maintenance: Neglected but Essential Aspects of Urban Environments
The kinds of structures and materials used to create built environments increasingly reveal problems of
sustainability and resilience in the face of climate change and related disasters. In addition, in the context of austerity and funding reduction, the lack of ongoing maintenance of infrastructure in the US and elsewhere has reached emergency levels, disrupting
and threatening people’s lives on a daily basis. Such circumstances demonstrate the value of considering the topics of materiality and maintenance of urban environments from both conceptual and empirical perspectives, with a contemporary or historical focus.
The organizers invite submissions that address: diverse regimes for repair and maintenance; changing or contested technologies deployed to restore material order; material affordances that building materials offer and their resistance or susceptibility to
decay; suspension of certain procedures of maintenance and initiation of others that indicate the valuing and devaluing of places, structures and uses; and distinct place- or time-based techniques that take into account local, non-human and human agencies
of decay and disrepair.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to Karen Frank ([log in to unmask]) and / or Tim Edensor ([log in to unmask]) by the 23
October. We will confirm acceptance by the 24 October and we expect you to register and submit your abstract on the AAG website by the 25 October.