Call for Papers
RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2009
Session Sponsored by PyGyWG
More Inconvenient Truth: Just when...
It's back - the self-righteous, irritating embodiment of the itch that
wont scratch itself; the pang of conscience you feel climbing the stairs
to your plane on the way to the next conference...
The prospect of catastrophic climate change has not gone away. And neither
has the imperative for Geography and everyone else to do something urgent
about it in the governance of our universities, in our teaching, and in
our place within wider local and global communities. The inconvenient
truth is not only still true, it is more true than ever. And it is so
inconvenient that for many academics the question is not how to stop the
planet burning but rather, how do advanced modern capitalist consumer
democracies try and manage to sustain that which is known to be
unsustainable? Under sentence of such a condemning yet seductive
post-ecology, we need radical intellectual and practical change.
As part of a continuing bid to place Geography at the forefront of the
transition to a lower-carbon future, which is both environmentally &
socially accountable, this session invites action-oriented interventions
on:
* Universities and particularly Geography departments IN transition:
What are we doing? What can we do? What are we struggling with? How can we
do better?
* Universities OF transition: eg. Transition (Town) Universities *
Transition research: How does our research relate / adapt to the
imperatives of climate change and its wider associated environmental and
social concerns?
* Academics and activists working to create transition beyond
Geography: How can we engage and learn from them?
We want to open up the (im)possibilities we often find ourselves caught
in, and ask what we can do differently. Moreover, we are keen to
facilitate the sustainable attendance and participation of those who chose
not to travel to attend, through the use of web-casting and video-linking;
as well as deciding the final content and format of the session in a
participatory stylee& via our blog:
http://inconvenientgeography.wordpress.com/
Please submit abstracts to Sophie Wynne-Jones [log in to unmask] and Kelvin
Mason [log in to unmask] by the 26th January.
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