*Apologies for cross-postings*
2ND CALL FOR PAPERS
Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) 2008 Annual Conference, London,
August 27-29
Water: Knowledge, Space, Flow
Chris Bear (Hull) and Jacob Bull (Exeter)
Sponsored by the Planning and Environment Research Group
To say that water is crucial to life is axiomatic. However, in spite of
this significance, water has, with a few notable exceptions, been
largely neglected by human geographers. It pervades our daily life and
manifests itself in a variety of spaces and forms, and is used in a
multitude of ways, but water's mattering is not limited to its status as
a crucial resource. It affects and is affected by people, shaping
spaces, defining ecologies and provoking emotions: the excitement and
fear caused by floods, the relaxing sound of a garden water feature, the
desirability of a waterfront office location, and the irritation of a
dripping tap. Water is instrumental in forming understandings of
identity, space and place (Strang, 2004) and becomes imbued with
different meanings in different social and cultural scenarios. Water
connects: it flows across divides between urban and rural, nature and
culture, public and private, self and other, and through concepts of
modernity (see, for example, Gandy, 2002 & 2004; Swyngedouw, 2004;
Kaika, 2005; Braun, 2005). Water's fluid form links different places,
and offers a connection between different issues, scales and
methodological approaches. It may also be perceived as a barrier between
different places and between 'ways of embodied being' (Jones, 2000); its
'alien nature' creates challenges, both for management and governance,
and for developing understandings of the life forms it contains.
This session will draw together emerging research on water to examine
the affective and material geographies of water and investigate the
particular knowledges and spaces associated with it. In so doing, the
session will offer a new direction to the 'geographies of water' as more
than a resource. We welcome contributions from first and third world,
urban and rural contexts, from human and physical geographers, other
disciplines and from practitioners beyond the academy. Possible topics
for papers could include:
* The role of water in shaping understandings of space, place and
identity
* Water and the body
* The fluidity of water
* Understandings, subjectivities and materialities of aquatic life
* Water as an agent/actant
* Affective waterscapes
* Gendered spaces of water
* The absence of water: abstraction, drought and access in
(re)defining spaces
Titles and abstracts should be sent to either Chris Bear
([log in to unmask]) or Jacob Bull ([log in to unmask]) by 14th
January 2007.
----------------------
Dr Christopher Bear
[log in to unmask]
Department of Geography
University of Hull
Hull HU6 7RX
United Kingdom
Telephone: 44(0)1482 465421
Fax: 44(0)1482 466340
Web: http://www.hull.ac.uk/geog/staff/Bear.htm
*****************************************************************************************
To view the terms under which this email is distributed, please go to http://www.hull.ac.uk/legal/email_disclaimer.html
*****************************************************************************************
|