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Call for papers
Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Seattle WA, April 12-16, 2011
Resilience and Beyond: Geographies of Response to Systemic Social, Economic, Political and/or Environmental Shock
Organizers: John R. Bryson, Jon Coaffee and Jon Sadler, University of Birmingham, UK, and Susan Christopherson, Cornell University
Resilience is becoming a fashionable and potentially over-used metaphor in the social sciences and in public policy discourse. There are many different types of resilience. On the one hand, resilience refers to the capability and capacity systems, social, economic and environmental, to withstand change On the other hand, the metaphor of ‘resilience’ can bring together the different components of reacting to and anticipating such risk - response, recovery, mitigation and preparedness – at a variety of spatial scales, from local communities to international coalitions.
The combined effects of the global division of labour, insecurity and terrorism, trans-national migration, climate change, and an array of other issues, pose different degrees of risk. External ‘threats’ or ‘shocks’ of this nature require adaptive and self-reliant systems, communities and place-led responses where resilience is centred not upon state institutions but upon citizen and community responses. Resilience is also linked to a number of associated concepts such as sustainability, social exclusion and well-being. However, it is arguably differentiated from these concepts by the degree to which a community, or place, is capable of absorbing a shock to its system and ‘re-bounding’. Economic resilience, for example, has been defined as the ‘ability of an entity or system to maintain function (e.g. continue producing) when shocked’ (Rose, 2007, p.384). However, in the context of place and communities it is the social consequences or ‘the ability of communities to withstand external shocks to their social infrastructure’’ (Adger, 2000, p.347) that is of greatest significance and concern.
This session seeks to bring together papers that explore the concept of resilience theoretically, empirically and methodologically in order to advance geographical debates and understanding concerning response to systemic social, economic, political and/or environmental shock. Resilience is being incorporated into debates across human geography (social, economic, environmental, ecological) and this session seeks to bring these debates together. Papers might examine topics including but not restricted to:
1. What does the term resilience mean? Is it an appropriate metaphor to use to describe recovery from ‘shock’
events?
2. Can the ideas and principles underpinning resilience be developed in meaningful ways?
3. Is it possible to learn from experiences of prior ‘shock’ events to facilitate enhanced resilience?
4. How do differential geographies of resilience emerge and how are they managed?
5. Urban spaces and design in response to risks, hazards and threats (such as climate change, flooding and
terrorism)
6. How does risk and the need for resilience, effect urban and regional decision-making?
7. How does the need for resilience help reborder urban areas?
8. Resilience and regional or local economies.
Please send an abstract (max 250 words) of your paper and expressions of interest to John Bryson ([log in to unmask]) and Jon Coaffee ([log in to unmask]) by 14th October 2010
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