Infrastructure as landscape: investigations into contemporary theories of global change
Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers 2015 Annual Meeting, Chicago, April 21-25
Organizers: Alan Wiig, Temple University Geography-Urban Studies and Rob Holmes, University of Florida Landscape Architecture
The Anthropocene (Crutzen 2006), planetary urbanism (Brenner 2013), and extrastatecraft (Easterling 2014) are all useful concepts that speak to current global geographic phenomena, but continued, close examination of the specific configurations of matter and space underlying these theories is necessary for engaged, critical scholarship.
Infrastructural landscapes are key spatial media for the forces described by each of these bodies of theory. A return to foundational conceptualizations of landscape beyond the scenographic (Corner et al 1999) as well as a reinvigorated infrastructure studies (Graham and Marvin 2001; Easterling 2014; Larkin 2012; Star 1999) offers productive means for empirical scholarship addressing the same issues of global concern addressed by these bodies of theory, such as anthropogenically-accelerated large-scale environmental change; flows of power and control between both human and nonhuman actors; and the effects of emerging technologies on urban space.
This session invites papers that consider new and re-invigorated theoretical approaches to geography through investigations of the disposition and agency of infrastructure as landscape (Easterling 2014; Gandy 2011; Strang 1996). We are particularly interested in (a) place-based field studies engaging the specificity and spatial consequences of the abovementioned topics, and/or (b) projects employing critical cartography, mapping, and visualization practices.
We seek to explore the material spaces of these globalized theories through their instantiation in specific landscapes produced and maintained by many networked infrastructures.
We invite papers addressing topics such as:
• operational landscapes, both within and without spaces of dense agglomeration and networked urbanism (Bélanger 2009; Graham and Marvin 2001; Brenner 2014; Varnelis 2008)
• the agency of nonhuman objects and materials: both infrastructural landscapes as actors, and nonhuman actors as generators of infrastructural landscapes (Bennett 2010; Gandy 2014; Heynen et al 2006; Morton 2013)
• the materiality of information technologies: ubiquitous computing and mobile connectivity, big data, and the smart city (Kitchin and Dodge 2011; Shelton et. al. 2014; Wiig 2013)
• free zones, the localization of global trade, and the political consequences of these developments (Easterling 2014; Ong 2006)
• urban policymaking, policy mobilities, and governance as ideas and bodies traveling along infrastructure, creating globally-oriented spaces (McCann and Ward 2011; McFarlane 2011)
Please send your proposal including title, a 250 word abstract and your contact details to the co-organisers ([log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]) by Wednesday October 29.
References:
Bélanger, P. 2009. “Landscape as Infrastructure.” Landscape Journal 28 (1) (January 1): 79-95.
Brenner, N. ed. 2014. Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization. Berlin: Jovis.
Brenner, N. 2013. “Theses on Urbanization.” Public Culture 25 (1 69) (February 18): 85–114.
Corner, J. ed. 1999. Eidetic operations and new landscapes. Recovering landscape: essays in contemporary landscape architecture: 153–169.
Crutzen, P. J. 2006. The “Anthropocene.” In Earth System Science in the Anthropocene, eds. P. D. E. Ehlers and D. T. Krafft, 13–18. Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Easterling, K. 2014. Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space. New York City: Verso.
Gandy, M. 2011. Landscape and infrastructure in the late-modern metropolis. The New Blackwell Companion to the City. Blackwell Publishing :58–65.
Gandy, M. 2014. The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Graham, S., and S. Marvin. 2001. Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition. New York: Routledge.
Heynen, N., M. Kaika, and E. Swyngedouw. 2006. In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism. New York: Routledge.
Kitchin, R., and M. Dodge. 2011. Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Larkin, B. 2012. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (1) (September 26)
McCann, E., and K. Ward eds. 2011. Mobile Urbanism: Cities and Policymaking in the Global Age. Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press.
McFarlane, C. 2011. Learning the City: Knowledge and Translocal Assemblage. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Morton, T. 2013. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press.
Ong, A. 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty First Edition edition. Durham N.C.: Duke University Press Books.
Shelton, T., M. Zook, and A. Wiig. “The ‘ Actually Existing Smart City ’ Forthcoming in Cambridge Journal of Regions , Economy and Society.” See: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2477482
Star, S. L. 1999. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure.” American Behavioral Scientist 43 (3) (November): 377–391.
Strang, G. L. 1996. Infrastructure as landscape. In Places, A Forum of Environmental Design, 8-15. Design History Foundation c/o Places, PO Box 1897, Lawrence, KS 66044-8897.
Varnelis, K. 2008. The Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles. Barcelona: Actar.
Wiig, A. 2013. “Everyday Landmarks of Networked Urbanism: Cellular Antenna Sites and the Infrastructure of Mobile Communication in Philadelphia.” Journal of Urban Technology 20 (3) (July): 21–37.
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