*Apologies for cross-posting*

Dear colleagues,

2nd Call for abstracts, EUGEO 2019, 15-18 May, 2019, Galway, Ireland
Deadline for submissions - 28th January 2019

Session Title:
Geographies of Repair: examining the emergence and interconnectedness
of repair and maintenance practices.

Session Convenors:
Alma Clavin, Teresa Dillon, Christoph Woiwode, Bath Spa University;
University of the West of England; Bath Spa University
Email: [log in to unmask]

For the purpose of this session, repair broadly refers to scholarly,
applied, artistic and civic practices, which deal with the upkeep,
maintenance, care and reuse of objects, materials, the environment,
buildings, systems, relations and processes (repairacts.net).  We view
repair as the challenge to move away from the rhetoric of the ‘new’ as
a means of progression and innovation. Instead, we look towards the
disconnected and the discarded, what is in ruin and broken as a means
through which to re-imagine the world and what we define as growth.
Questioning the lexicon of the ‘smart’ and globally connected, repair
addresses everyday consumption by revealing the geopolitical
struggles, labour systems and consequences of our material lives on
the environment and other species.

Since the 1970s academic and policy discourses relating to waste have
predominately focused on the end of life management of objects and
goods. In addressing such issues, circular practices have now begun to
pay attention to repair, reuse and maintenance practices as key forms
of remediation. Here, repair is positioned within the context of
policies calling for more circular and restorative approaches to
dealing with waste such as the United Nations (UN) Global Sustainable
Development Goals (2016); New Urban Agenda (2016) and various EU Waste
Directives (2008, 2012). Yet despite such shifts across Europe and the
global north, local city councils remain entranced in the ideals of
recycling waste, while critics have shown how recycling waste
transfers the problem to sites where practices of management and
labour are concerning issues.

In examining geographies of repair, we look towards what has been
termed a counter, affective politics of concern (Thrift, 2005; Graham
and Thrift, 2007), whereby individuals and organisations troubled with
waste processes have begun to develop their own approaches to repair.
Examples include repair cafes (communal sites where individuals bring
along broken items to be mended by locals, free of charge); arts
practices relating to repair; organisations such as ifixit.org who
lobby for repair legislation. Taking Houston’s (2017: 51) view that
repair is a “deeply timely affair” that “evokes important senses of
rhythm, duration and precedence”, this session examines how
maintenance and repair activities produce counter strategies to those
waste cycles that push the problem onto others.

In building on a UK network of academics, artists and practitioners
working on various aspects of repair (repairacts.net), we invite
papers that seek to theoretically and empirically engage with repair
and maintenance within geography and other disciplines.

Possible themes include but are not limited to:
• E-waste and globalisation
• Ethnographies of maintenance and repair
• Everyday lived experiences of maintenance and repair
• Socio-spatial patterns of maintenance and repair
• Labour relations of maintenance and repair
• Ethics of care as relating to repair
• The impacts of technology and technological lock-ins on the
emergence of repair activities
• The Anthropocene and ecological dimensions of maintenance and repair
• Repair and maintenance as represented in arts practice
• Ideas around decay and ‘letting go’ of physical objects and the built heritage
• Unauthorised and illicit actions involved in repair of electronic items


Please send your abstracts (maximum 250 words) to Alma Clavin
([log in to unmask]) by January 28th 2019.

########################################################################

To unsubscribe from the CRIT-GEOG-FORUM list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CRIT-GEOG-FORUM&A=1