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CFP: RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2011, London, 31 August - 2 September 2011
Unpacking energy and resilience
Organised by: Stefan Bouzarovski, Rosie Day, Oleg Golubchikov, Dan van
der Horst, John Walls (GEES, University of Birmingham)
Sponsored by: Planning and Environment Research Group, Climate Change
Research Group
Recent years have seen the rapid expansion of academic interest in the
geographies of energy. The growing policy focus on questions of energy
governance, systemic transition and infrastructure has been motivated by
rising concerns over climate change mitigation and the security of
energy supply at different scales of governance. Themes that
have received little or no scholarly attention to date – including the
materialities of transnational hydrocarbon flows, the manner in which
social identities are implicated in energy use patterns, and the urban
and regional implications of various energy futures – are becoming
increasingly prominent in the geographical literature, which is also
adding its distinctive slant to wider issues of energy production and
consumption in society and space.
At the same time, theoretical and empirical work on social resilience
has been gaining increasing currency within academic and policy circles
alike. The property or process of social resilience is said to be
contingent upon the manner in which the system it describes can
successfully achieve a socio-technical and political shift in its
internal organisation in response to a change in external circumstances.
The resilience paradigm is part of an expanding scholarly attempt to
describe and assess the ability of societies across the world to
transform their political, economic and technical structures in line
with the demands of more challenging future conditions. As such,
resilience has a pronounced territorial dimension, since its
articulation is highly place- and scale-dependent.
The geographies of energy and social resilience, however, have rarely
been explicitly considered under a single conceptual matrix. The session
will explore the multiple theoretical and empirical intersections of
these two frameworks, drawing attention to the articulation of
social resilience in relation to energy systems and flows. Contributions
that can broadly relate to this topic will be welcome, in addition to
more specific papers focusing on, for example, the relationship between
energy use and social vulnerability (as the flip side of resilience) in
the context of social and built formations; or the socio-spatial
implications of the integration of resilience in the design of
low-carbon energy networks.
Please send a 250 word abstract to [log in to unmask] no later
than the 15th of February 2011.
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