Apologies for cross-posting:
Annual American Association of Geographers meeting, Las Vegas, Nevada,
22nd-27th of March 2009
A session organised by Sebastien Nobert, King's College London
If one accepts that politics means "the play of forces and interests
engaged in a conflict over the representation" of the social and
biophysical worlds (Nancy 1993: x), the politics of science results
from the confrontations and negotiations occurring when social actors
attempt to organise human and non-human coexistence through the
production of knowledge, rules, laws and other forms of
categorisations. Although many have written on the politics of science
and the spatialization of knowledge, from laboratories to the
commercialisation of technologies and scientific products, very few
have demonstrated how knowing the ways in which these politics are
articulated could inform current environmental politics and contribute
to policy making. This is particularly important in a context in which
scientific discourses and practices are seen for many as the only ways
to connect with, and to know, the biophysical world. This also means
that it is paramount for human geographers and social scientists to
engage with the politics of scientific knowledge in order to show how
global environmental issues such as climate change and the
overexploitation of non-humans could be tackled by experts and
non-experts. Thus, this session aims to bring together papers
investigating how science studies have contributed to the development
of environmental policies in developed and developing economies, and
is particularly interested in research focussing on the applicability
of theoretical ideas outside academia. Although the main interest of
this session is to see concrete empirical examples of the usefulness
of social studies of science in environmental politics, theoretical
papers are welcome as long as they help theorise how to bridge
academia and policy making. The final aim of this session is to
reiterate the significance of social studies of science in policy
making and to attract the awareness of human geographers and other
types of social scientists to the significance of making their work
relevant to policy makers.
In other words, the topics of interest could answer to the following
questions:
-How can social studies of science help the democratization of
knowledge for the general public/ non-experts?
-How can social studies of science help scientists in their daily
practices and recommendations to policy makers?
-What do social studies of science have to say to physical
scientists/geographers?
-How can studying science from a social perspective help to cross the
divide between human and physical geography/science and why is it
important to do so?
-How can social studies of science be used for studying power
inequalities between the developed and developing economies in
conservation projects?
-How can scientific discourses and practices from developed economies
serve the interests of developing countries without becoming
instruments of neo-colonialism?
-How can the notions of risk and environmental protection serve policy
making better with the input of social studies of science?
-What is the future of social studies of science for policy making in
a context of global environmental issues (i.e., climate change,
pollution, overexploitation of non-humans)?
Abstracts (250 words max) should be submitted to Sébastien Nobert
([log in to unmask]) by Friday, 10 October 2008 at the latest.
More information on the AAG Las Vegas Meeting can be found on
http://aag.org/annualmeetings/2009/index.htm .
Reference:
Nancy, J.-L. 1991. The inoperative community. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
____________________________________
Sebastien Nobert, Ph.D.
Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Department of Geography
King's College London
Strand, London WC2R 2LS, England,
Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 2916
--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
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