Please find attached a CFP at ISA in Stockholm 2005 - a continuation of the
Technonatures series - Geographers input would be welcome.If the formatting
is out on this email I have attached the document as well (apologies).

Chris Wilbert.

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International Sociological Association RC24 Environment and Society
                               INTERIM CONFERENCE

                           TECHNONATURES III

Environments, Technologies, Spaces and Places in the Twenty First Century


                        37th World Congress of the
                          International Institute of Sociology
                          Stockholm, Sweden
                         July 6th -9th 2005

                         CALL FOR PAPERS

In an era marked by accelerating environmental change and deepening battles
over eco-technological and biotechnological transformations, the nature of
‘Nature’ and the politics of n/Nature are increasingly up for grabs.
Technonatures is an onrunning series of conferences and symposia concerned
with investigating the ‘power geometries’ of emerging hybrid worlds and
discussing future trajectories and possibilites.

Technonatures III is organised as an interim conference at the World
Congress of Sociology in association with Research Committee 24
(Environment and Society) of the International Sociological Association.
In this meeting, we would like to draw environmental sociology, into
conversation with urban political ecology, STS, environmental
geography/anthropology, advocates of cyborg studies/ANT and the new
political economy of networks, flows and mobilites. The aim will be to
grapple with the dilemmas posed by ‘technonatural times’ and to reflect on
the possibilites that exist for supporting socially and environmentally
just futures. We are interested in hearing from colleagues who could
present papers in the following areas:


Theme I : Technonatural Political Economies and  Political Ecologies

Damian White, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, James Madison
University, USA

How can we understand the relationship between new political economies of
scapes, flows, mobilities and ‘Empire’; emerging industries such as
biotechnology, information technology, industrial ecology and
environmental change? How are accelerated capital accumulation, policy
developments, technological and social change affecting the contemporary
‘production of nature’, ecological modernising projects, the development
of hybrid forms and the spaces and places of diverse ecologies? How can we
generate more productive engagements between political economy, political
ecology, ‘new ecology’ and STS to understand emerging ‘hybrid natures’,
‘social natures’ and ‘technonatures’? One page abstracts should be sent to
Damian White [log in to unmask] by November 30, 2004. Deadline to send full
paper: May 1st 2005





Theme II : Technonatural Bodies, Subjectivites and Cultures

Co-Ordinator:

Chris Wilbert Dept of Planning, Anglia Polytechnic University, UK
Fletcher Linder Department of Sociology and Anthropology, James Madison
University, USA

How are modern bodies, subjectivities and cultures being constituted,
produced and transformed in technonatural times? To what extent and in
what ways are bodies taking on hybrid and cyborg forms?  Are such
developments generating new subjectivities and/or opening up new
possibilities for colonization, patenting, surveillance and
commodification? Are the relationship between humans and other species or
humans and other machines becoming less clear? How are perceptions,
experiences and cultures of ‘nature’ being altered in media saturated
societies? Is the search for hybridity a empirical endeavor? An ethically
inflected political strategy? An aesthetic obsession? In this session, we
would like to hear from colleagues interested in mapping and debating the
transformations of bodies, subjectivities and cultures occuring in
technonatural worlds. One page abstracts to be sent to [log in to unmask]
and [log in to unmask] by November 30, 2004. Deadline to send full paper:
June 1st 2005


Theme III : Technonatural Urban Worlds/Sustainable Urban Futures?

Damian White, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, James Madison
University, USA
Chris Wilbert Dept of Planning, Anglia Polytechnic University, UK

How are urban worlds being affected by rapid environmental and
technological change? How are diverse urban natures, spaces and places
being transformed to meet the challenge/rhetoric(?) of ‘sustainability’?
Do projects espousing ‘sustainable urbanism’, green architecture, ‘cyborgs
urbanism’ and green cities provide the basis for alternative urban
‘productions of nature’? Can approaches to the city which view the urban
through discourses of networks, flows, scapes and mobilities generate more
productive understandings of environmental displacement and environmental
(in)justice? Alternatively, could cities and ‘the urban’ offer ‘spaces of
hope’ for alternative technonatural worlds? One page abstracts should be
sent to [log in to unmask]  and [log in to unmask] by November 30, 2004.
Deadline to send full paper: June 1st 2005.


Theme IV: Environmental Politics in Technonatural Times: Exhaustion or
Renewal?

Damian White, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, James Madison
University, USA
Chris Wilbert Dept of Planning, Anglia Polytechnic University, UK

How is socio-technological change affecting environmental social movements,
their political cultures, ethical commitments and discursive strategies? To
what extent do digital media,  industrial ecology, and other diverse
information/green technologies open up possibilities for new forms of
social movement mobilisation? To what extent does the rise of
'technonatural times' indicate that many forms of environmentalism are
presently in deep intellectual/political crisis? To what extent can
literatures on the 'production of nature', 'social nature',
'post/transhumanism', 'the democratisation of technology',
‘cosmopolitics’, 'viridian ecology/design' or debates about ‘open
source/activist technology' reframe technonatural political/ethical
questions. One page abstracts should be sent to [log in to unmask]  and
[log in to unmask] by November 30, 2004. Deadline to send full paper: May
1st 2005. Damian White

One page abstracts should be sent to [log in to unmask]  and
[log in to unmask] by November 30, 2004. Deadline to send full paper:
June 1st 2005.