Assistant Professor in Environment and Race – University of South Carolina

The School of the Earth, Ocean, and Environment invites applications for a tenure-track, assistant professor position to begin August 16, 2018. We seek an individual with outstanding research and teaching capabilities and interests that focus on the intersections of race and the environment. The area of specialization is open. Research interests may include, but are not limited to: environmental justice; race, nature, and landscape; diversity in environmental institutions; race and class in environmental movements; the intersections of social inequality and environmental conflict; race and conservation; and race and environmental imagery. We seek candidates whose scholarship is theoretically grounded and who can work across disciplinary boundaries to produce innovative research and teaching. Potential disciplinary backgrounds could include sociology, geography, anthropology, history, public policy, political science, environmental humanities, comparative literature, African American studies, American studies and related fields.

The successful candidate is expected to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in the School of the Earth, Ocean and Environment and to maintain an active research agenda. The School (http://www.seoe.sc.edu) is a multidisciplinary unit with a strong commitment to expanding its faculty in the areas of environmental social science and humanities. Potential collaborative interactions exist within the School and with other units across the University. Teaching responsibilities will include introductory courses that support interdisciplinary degrees in Environmental Studies and Environmental Science as well as upper-level undergraduate and graduate level courses related to the candidate’s specialty, with a standard teaching load of two courses per semester. Cross appointment with an appropriate unit is possible, depending on the candidate’s expertise. A Ph.D. is required at the time of appointment. Applicants should submit a cover letter, curriculum vita, research statement and statement of teaching interests in a single pdf file and a list of contact information for three references through uscjobs.sc.edu/postings/20441. For more information please contact: Alicia Wilson, Environment & Race Search Committee Chair, School of the Earth, Ocean & Environment, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, awilson@seoe.sc.edu.

To ensure full consideration, applications and letters should be received by Nov 20, 2017. We will review files until a candidate is selected. The University of South Carolina is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer and is responsive to the needs of dual-career couples. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. The University of South Carolina does not discriminate in educational or employment opportunities on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender, age, disability, veteran status or genetics.

The School of the Earth, Ocean and Environment is a multidisciplinary unit of approximately 600 undergraduate students, more than 80 graduate students, and 32 faculty representing research areas ranging from Earth and Ocean Sciences to Environmental Policy and History. The University of South Carolina’s main campus in Columbia is a Carnegie “very high research activity” institution with over 34,000 students on the main campus, more than 450 academic programs, and the top Honors College in the United States. Columbia is a vibrant community with approximately 800,000 people across the greater metropolitan area. It is the home of state government, major corporate headquarters, diverse entertainment venues, a lively arts scene, and affordable neighborhoods.  Located in the middle of the state, Columbia provides easy access to South Carolina’s beautiful beaches and mountains.

Tourism is undergoing major changes in the advent of social media networks and other forms of digital technology. This has affected a number of tourism related processes including marketing, destination making, travel experiences and visitor feedback but also various tourism subsectors, namely hospitality, transportation and tour operators. An already substantial and growing body of research has investigated these developments, both regarding tourism processes (Munar 2011, Tham et. al. 2013, Mkono & Tribe, 2017) and industry subsectors (Leung et al. 2013, Munar & Jacobsen, 2014, Gretzel & Fesenmaier 2009, Hvass & Munar, 2012). However, largely overlooked are the effects of these changes on the urban fabric and its social structure, in particular questions concerning inequality.

Digital technologies are widely perceived as a vehicle to foster economic upliftment. Advocacy for new digital platforms and devices often includes claims that they allow for a wider distribution of the benefits of tourism (Martin 2016, Cheng 2016). There is plenty of evidence that tourism, helped by digital technologies, has dispersed into urban spaces/places which have not previously been associated much with the tourist gaze (Maitland & Newman 2009). In this situation, even social inequality, and poverty as such, can become a tourist attraction and at times subject to commodification processes, as research on slum tourism has shown (Burgold et al. 2013, Freire-Medeiros 2013, Frenzel et al. 2015, Frenzel 2016, Whyte 2017).

But claims that digitally enhanced tourism is able to address issues of inequality remain contested as resistance and protest against noise, overcrowding and tourism-related gentrification has become an issue across various cities (Colomb/Novy 2017). They also remain largely untested empirically.

Against this backdrop we aim to bring together two aspects of tourism studies which have been treated rather isolated from one another but need to be addressed in their complex interrelations: the influence of digital technologies on tourism and the question of tourism and urban inequality. The panel seeks to examine a broad range of studies that deal with issues of urban inequality in regard to the application of digital technologies in the tourism sector. The research questions guiding papers for this session emerge from three interconnected dimensions (1) Narratives and representations; (2) Media infrastructures and the power of algorithms; and (3) Political economy and material effects.

Narratives and Representation
Some insinuations have been made in terms of the potential of social media to reduce inequality, due to its accessibility and the free or low-cost nature of its use. Social media may enable marginalised urban citizens to amplify their voice in urban conflicts. (Martin 2016, Xenos, Vromen & Loader 2014). Tourists can be catalyst in these processes by providing an audience and prompting the need and the economic incentive to create local stories about places. More generally speaking, tourism has been shown to put places otherwise marginalised on maps from which they were previously hidden (Steinbrink et al 2014), however such processes may have problematic consequences (Holst 2016). We seek to understand better how digital technologies can assist in putting certain, either unknown or stigmatized, areas “on the map” and thus increase their visibility as a destination in terms of tourism offerings (Cheng 2016)

Media infrastructures and the power of algorithms
While there is evidence for a wider expansion of digital infrastructures into neglected neighborhoods, the quality, speed and spread of media infrastructures often remains reflective of the relative wealth of an area. How do digital infrastructure projects affect tourism’s ability to alleviate poverty? And even if infrastructural limits are overcome, researchers are increasingly sceptical about claims regarding the platform economy’s promise of equality (Baka 2015). Algorythmic management and rationality is far from neutral (Jeacle and Carter 2011). Do the algorythmic rationales and software principles of digitally enhanced tourism work as empowering the urban poor? And are platforms really “equal” when tour operators with larger capital seem to have advantages in terms of social media management and also the manipulation of algorithms?

Political Economy and material effects
Key sharing economy actors of urban tourism like AirBnB claim that their endevor has poverty alleviating aspects. Thus struggling families may increase their revenue by temporarily renting out vacant rooms or housing. The evidence for this is scarce and often contradicting claims are made, e.g. that Airbnb drives up local rents and has displacement effects (Lee 2016, Sans & Domínguez. 2016). In addition, some research has demonstrated that the sharing economy is displacing traditional tourism economies with significant consequences for local operators that rely on this market (Fang, Ye & Law, 2015). Moreover leakages need to be re-considered as every AirBnB transaction moves locally generated money to California.

Methodological considerations
We invite papers from a variety of disciplines and with both qualitative and quantitative approaches. We also note that digital technologies have opened new methodological possibilities, in particular for social science and big data uses. We encourage contributions that make use of these new technologies, as well as reflect on the methodological implications of the new availability (or limits there of) of large scale data sets in digital form.

We have space for one more paper:

Cold War era area studies and traditional regional geography were presented by their proponents as integrative fields – approaches to coalesce macro and micro level analyses of geo-strategic motives, social processes, and political and economic dynamics. In the 1990s, a reiteration of regional geography under the label of New Regionalism (Storper 1997) explored economic processes at the local level, yet maintaining a keen attention to multilevel and comparative sociopolitical dimensions. Since then, the predominance of thematic foci in the discipline – such as political geography writ large, and strands of economic geography such as global value chains and production networks created topical, theoretical, and in some cases methodological division between state-centered analyses in political geography and firms-centered analyses in economic geography. Notwithstanding the claims of geoeconomics to account for the role of the market in larger political decisions, and GVC and GPN roles of the state in governance, it is difficult to account for the liminal spaces in which firms and states actually interact, and, consequently, for the ways in which the increasingly transnational life of firms influences changes in the structure of states.

This session invites reflections on how regional analyses may be able to carry forward more nuanced analyses of the processes tying together firms and states. These include, but are not limited to, new forms of sovereignty and territoriality aimed at regulating but also supporting firms within as well as without borders.

• We welcome regionally focused contributions from economic, political, and cultural geographers that include, but are not limited to:
• Theoretical reflections on the notion of region within geo-economic imaginaries that privilege metaphors of flows over viewing states as static frames;
• The interactions between states sponsored investment promotion practices and firms’ locational choices;
• Commercial and business diplomacy;
• Questioning of the organizational boundaries between states and firms through public-private partnerships and other means;
• Theoretical discussions of the role of states in value chains and production networks, as well as the role of firms in geo-economics;
• Empirical studies of how transnational firms (both large multinationals and small transnational or diaspora businesses), governments, and civil societies communicate their reciprocal interests and mediate conflicts;

Depending on the quality of the papers and inclinations of the participants we will submit a special journal issue proposal. Accordingly, please plan to submit a paper at an advanced draft level.

Please send your abstracts to Christian Sellar csellar@olemiss.edu or Jeremy Tasch jtasch@towson.edu

CALL FOR PAPERS, AAG ANNUAL MEETING 2018

Organizers: Fabian Frenzel, Julia Giddy, Thomas Frisch

Tourism is undergoing major changes in the advent of social media networks and other forms of digital technology. This has affected a number of tourism related processes including marketing, destination making, travel experiences and visitor feedback but also various tourism subsectors, namely hospitality, transportation and tour operators. An already substantial and growing body of research has investigated these developments, both regarding tourism processes (Munar 2011, Tham et. al. 2013, Mkono & Tribe, 2017) and industry subsectors (Leung et al. 2013, Munar & Jacobsen, 2014, Gretzel & Fesenmaier 2009, Hvass & Munar, 2012). However, largely overlooked are the effects of these changes on the urban fabric and its social structure, in particular questions concerning inequality.

Digital technologies are widely perceived as a vehicle to foster economic upliftment. Advocacy for new digital platforms and devices often includes claims that they allow for a wider distribution of the benefits of tourism (Martin 2016, Cheng 2016). There is plenty of evidence that tourism, helped by digital technologies, has dispersed into urban spaces/places which have not previously been associated much with the tourist gaze (Maitland & Newman 2009). In this situation, even social inequality, and poverty as such, can become a tourist attraction and at times subject to commodification processes, as research on slum tourism has shown (Burgold et al. 2013, Freire-Medeiros 2013, Frenzel et al. 2015, Frenzel 2016, Whyte 2017).

But claims that digitally enhanced tourism is able to address issues of inequality remain contested as resistance and protest against noise, overcrowding and tourism-related gentrification has become an issue across various cities (Colomb/Novy 2017). They also remain largely untested empirically.

Against this backdrop we aim to bring together two aspects of tourism studies which have been treated rather isolated from one another but need to be addressed in their complex interrelations: the influence of digital technologies on tourism and the question of tourism and urban inequality. The panel seeks to examine a broad range of studies that deal with issues of urban inequality in regard to the application of digital technologies in the tourism sector. The research questions guiding papers for this special issue emerge from three interconnected dimensions (1) Narratives and representations; (2) Media infrastructures and the power of algorithms; and (3) Political economy and material effects.

Narratives and Representation
Some insinuations have been made in terms of the potential of social media to reduce inequality, due to its accessibility and the free or low-cost nature of its use. Social media may enable marginalised urban citizens to amplify their voice in urban conflicts. (Martin 2016, Xenos, Vromen & Loader 2014). Tourists can be catalyst in these processes by providing an audience and prompting the need and the economic incentive to create local stories about places. More generally speaking, tourism has been shown to put places otherwise marginalised on maps from which they were previously hidden (Steinbrink et al 2014), however such processes may have problematic consequences (Holst 2016). We seek to understand better how digital technologies can assist in putting certain, either unknown or stigmatized, areas “on the map” and thus increase their visibility as a destination in terms of tourism offerings (Cheng 2016)

Media infrastructures and the power of algorithms
While there is evidence for a wider expansion of digital infrastructures into neglected neighborhoods, the quality, speed and spread of media infrastructures often remains reflective of the relative wealth of an area. How do digital infrastructure projects affect tourism’s ability to alleviate poverty? And even if infrastructural limits are overcome, researchers are increasingly sceptical about claims regarding the platform economy’s promise of equality (Baka 2015). Algorythmic management and rationality is far from neutral (Jeacle and Carter 2011). Do the algorythmic rationales and software principles of digitally enhanced tourism work as empowering the urban poor? And are platforms really “equal” when tour operators with larger capital seem to have advantages in terms of social media management and also the manipulation of algorithms?

Political Economy and material effects
Key sharing economy actors of urban tourism like AirBnB claim that their endevor has poverty alleviating aspects. Thus struggling families may increase their revenue by temporarily renting out vacant rooms or housing. The evidence for this is scarce and often contradicting claims are made, e.g. that Airbnb drives up local rents and has displacement effects (Lee 2016, Sans & Domínguez. 2016). In addition, some research has demonstrated that the sharing economy is displacing traditional tourism economies with significant consequences for local operators that rely on this market (Fang, Ye & Law, 2015). Moreover leakages need to be re-considered as every AirBnB transaction moves locally generated money to California.

Methodological considerations
We invite papers from a variety of disciplines and with both qualitative and quantitative approaches. We also note that digital technologies have opened new methodological possibilities, in particular for social science and big data uses. We encourage contributions that make use of these new technologies, as well as reflect on the methodological implications of the new availability (or limits there of) of large scale data sets in digital form.

We invite abstracts of max 250 words for consideration to be presented at the AAG 2018 in New Orleans. Please send your abstracts to Dr. Julia K Giddy (juliag@uj.ac.za).

Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers

AAG 2018 – New Orleans, April 10-14, 2018

Nations Beyond Nationalism:

Producing Nation-ness at Multiple Scales

Session Organizers: Dylan Brady (University of Oregon) and Jennifer Titanski-Hooper (Francis Marion University)

Discussions of nationalism as a political movement often overshadow and displace discussions of nations as multi-scalar social, cultural, and political entities. Beyond even banal nationalism (Billig 1995), powerful sociomaterial processes produce the nation as an invisible and ubiquitous backdrop to everyday life (Lefebvre 1991; Brenner and Elden 2009). This session seeks to draw together papers that examine the subtler ways that the nation is embodied, produced, transformed and institutionalized, apart from the political movement of nationalism.

Agnew’s identification of the territorial trap (1994) exposed the limits and failures of the nation-state as a geopolitical ideal. While a static, bounded territorial unit is the target of the national project, producing the nation is itself a series of dynamic, contingent and relational network processes at multiple scales (Jones and Fowler 2007; Merriman and Jones 2016).  Nations are embodied via the construction of multiple, intersecting gender, race, and class identities (Dowler and Sharp 2001; Fluri 2008; Yuval-Davis 1997). This session seeks to investigate the concrete processes which work to actualize and contest the abstract ideal of the nation-state.

Momentarily decoupling the nation from nationalist rhetoric allows us to trace the divergent and complex processes that contribute to nation-ness. Military service (Conversi 2007), infrastructure projects (Akhter 2015), public education, media and other social institutions (Edensor 2004) all work to integrate people and space into the nation-state. Yet each of these “nation effects” (cf. Painter 2006) has a distinct geography, articulating together particular groups at specific scales—and often creating fractures within the nation even as they knit it together.

This session seeks to better understand the nation by engaging with these material processes of nation-building. How are nations assembled (and contested) in localities, regions and the globe? How are other infrastructural, technological, economic, social and cultural processes linked into the production of nation-ness? To what extent can nation-building escape the confines of nationalism, or subvert it? We invite empirically-based paper submissions that investigate how material practices create multiple senses of nation-ness.

1) Call for papers: Please submit an abstract of 250 words and program identification number (PIN) to Dylan Brady (dbrady@uoregon.edu) and Jennifer Titanski-Hooper (jtitanskihooper@fmarion.edu)by October 25^th.

2) In addition to paper presentations, the session organizers hope to conclude the session with a panel discussion on the session’s themes. If you are interested in joining this discussion, please send your name, PIN, and a brief sketch of your thoughts to the session organizers.

Works Cited:

Agnew, John. 1994. “The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory.” Review of International Political Economy 1 (1): 53–80. doi:10.2307/4177090.

Akhter, Majed. 2015. “Infrastructure Nation: State Space, Hegemony, and Hydraulic Regionalism in Pakistan.” Antipode, April, 1–22. doi:10.1111/anti.12152.

Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London; Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Brenner, Neil, and Stuart Elden. 2009. “Henri Lefebvre on State, Space, Territory.” International Political Sociology 3 (4): 353–377. doi:10.1111/j.1749-5687.2009.00081.x.

Conversi, Daniele. 2007. “Homogenisation, Nationalism and War: Should We Still Read Ernest Gellner?” Nations & Nationalism 13 (3): 371–94. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8129.2007.00292.x.

Dowler, Lorraine, and Joanne Sharp. 2001. “A Feminist Geopolitics?” Space & Polity 5 (3): 165–76. doi:10.1080/13562570120104382.

Edensor, Tim. 2004. “Automobility and National Identity Representation, Geography and Driving Practice.” Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4–5): 101–120.

Fluri, Jennifer L. 2008. “Feminist-Nation Building in Afghanistan: An Examination of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).” Feminist Review 89 (1): 34–54. doi:10.1057/fr.2008.6.

Jones, Rhys, and Carwyn Fowler. 2007. “Placing and Scaling the Nation.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25 (2): 332–54. doi:10.1068/d68j.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The production of space. Oxford; Cambridge: Blackwell.

Merriman, Peter, and Rhys Jones. 2016. “Nations, Materialities and Affects.” Progress in Human Geography, May, 309132516649453. doi:10.1177/0309132516649453.

Painter, Joe. 2006. “Prosaic Geographies of Stateness.” Political Geography 25 (7): 752–74. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2006.07.004.

Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1997. Gender and Nation: SAGE Publications. SAGE.

CfP AAG 2018 – Contemporary U.S. colonialisms: Crises and Politics.

Organizers: Sasha Davis (Keene State College) Sasha.davis@keene.edu
and Scott Kirsch (University of North Carolina) kirsch@email.unc.edu

Recent hurricane disasters in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as the targeting of Guam during disputes between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, have highlighted the dangers and oppressions that accompany contemporary colonial relationships in U.S. territories. Given the continued relevance and impact of colonialism in the current era, this session invites papers that examine the consequences of modern colonialism as well as help develop theories, tactics and strategies – legal and extralegal – for transforming these colonial relationships.

While the political statuses between the U.S. and territorial possessions formalize the second-class citizenship of many territorial residents, the contemporary imposition of colonial processes extends beyond ‘official’ colonies. While there are places with territorial or commonwealth statuses such as Puerto Rico, Guam, The U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands that are clear examples of formally restricted governance, there are other places such as foreign communities hosting U.S. military bases, countries in ‘Free Association’ with the U.S., and culturally distinct spaces within the official boundaries of the U.S. such as Hawai’i and indigenous lands across North America that are subject to U.S. policies, but which have limited or non-existent formal mechanisms for producing or affecting these policies. We therefore invite papers that focus on any geographical context where U.S. colonial political processes continue to operate.

Possible topics can include, but are not limited to:

The production of vulnerability in colonies (environmental, infrastructural, military)

Legal geographies of contemporary colonialism

Colonialism, austerity and neoliberalism

‘Insularity’ as political category

Militarization and colonialism

Research methodologies in colonial contexts

Theoretical perspectives on sovereignty and territory

Case studies of resistance and sovereignty movements

Solidarity activism and colonized places

Migration, mobilities and citizenship in colonial settings

United Nations decolonization processes

Resource extraction in colonial settings

Co-Organizers:                     

Sasha Davis, Department of Geography, Keene State College. Sasha.davis@keene.edu

Scott Kirsch, Department of Geography, University of North Carolina kirsch@email.unc.edu

This CFP is part of a two-session series focusing on (1) Displacement, Deportation, and (Forced) Migration, and (2) Geographical Perspectives on Social Inequality and Mobility. We plan for each session to have a discussant.

Early career scholars are encouraged to apply.

AAG 2018 CFP: Displacement, Deportation, and (Forced) Migration
Co-organized by: Emily Frazier (The University of Tennessee, Knoxville) & Dylan Connor (The University of Colorado, Boulder)
Sponsored by: Population, Ethnic

Displacement across the globe is now at an all-time high, and the causes, consequences, and sites of dislocation are diverse. Although geography has long been touted as a discipline suited to studying migration, or more recently, mobilities, the phenomenon of displacement has received less attention. Taking Hyndman’s (2000, 2) definition of displacement as “involuntary movement, cultural dislocation, social disruption, material dispossession, and political disenfranchisement”, this session invites papers that critically examine all types, instances and causes of displacement, across scales from the local to the global.

The goal of this session is to unite interest and promote collaboration among scholars of population and displacement. We want to foster conversation and bring together critical conceptualizations of displacement in its various forms. We encourage the submission of papers focused on: empirical examinations of displacement; deportation as a method of curtailing, removing, managing and preventing people from residing in a place; theorizations of “place” and “emplacement”; spatial analyses of displacement; the scalar aspect of displacement; and comparative studies of displacement across a wide range of contexts. Given the persistent vulnerability of displaced populations, we also seek papers with a focus on the experiences of displaced populations.

Other possible topics include, but are not limited to:
– Causes, consequences and repercussions of climate- and disaster-related displacement
– Gentrification, urban development and eviction as drivers of displacement
– Deportation and (forced) migration as displacement
– Resistance(s) to displacement
– Destruction of informal settlements
– Results/Consequences of displacement
– Humanitarian assistance and management of displacement
– Local displacements, for example: New Orleans

Interested participants may send an abstract and PIN to Emily Frazier at eblackar@vols.utk.edu and Dylan Connor at dylan.connor@colorado.edu for consideration by October 23rd.

References:
King, R. 2011. Geography and Migration Studies: Retrospect and Prospect. Population, Space and Place 18(2): 134 – 153.
Hyndman, J. 2000. Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Second Biennial Conference of the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN)

 POLLEN18: Political Ecology, the Green Economy, and Alternative Sustainabilities

When: 20-22 June 2018
Where: Oslo and Akershus University College, Oslo, Norway
Organised by: The Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) Secretariat; Oslo and Akershus University College; Centre for Environment and Development (SUM), University of Oslo; Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences
Abstract/Panel Submission Deadline: 15 December 2017
Conference Website: https://politicalecologynetwork.com/pollen-biannual-conference/

Contact: politicalecology18@gmail.com

Over the past two decades, political ecologists have provided extensive critiques of the privatization, commodification, and marketization of nature, including of the new forms of accumulation and appropriation that these might facilitate under the more recent guise of the so-called green economy. These critiques have often demonstrated that such approaches can retain deleterious implications for certain vulnerable populations across the developing world and beyond, including in urban centres and within the interstices of the ‘Global North’. With few exceptions, however, political ecologists have paid decidedly less attention to exploring, critically engaging, and ‘planting the seed’ of alternative initiatives for pursuing both sustainability and socio-environmental justice. Surely, many scholars have begun to both support and study movements pursuing alternative socio-ecological relations rooted in critical traditions such as degrowth, postcolonialism, feminism, anarchism, and eco-Marxism. Yet much more could be done to understand and illuminate the prospects for these movements, as well as potential sources of tension and synergy between and amongst them.

Accordingly, this second biennial conference of the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) aims to engage the emergence of the green economy or green growth in their various iterations explicitly as a terrain of struggle. In doing so, we invite empirical, conceptual, political, and methodological contributions appraising the ways in which there are many potential ‘alternative sustainabilities’ for pursuing human and non-human well-being in the context of global economic and ecological crises. Each of these reflects often quite variable constellations of social, political, and economic relations. However, there are also diverse efforts underway to pre-empt or to foreclose upon these alternatives – as well as tensions, contradictions, and fissions within movements aiming to actualize or enact them – highlighting an implicit politics of precisely whose conception of sustainability is deemed to be possible or desirable in any given time and place.

In pursuit of this objective, proposals for papers and panels are invited that address one or more of the following themes and issues:

• Concrete forms and effects of green economy practicesincluding the translation of global discourses into place-based projects and programmes for – inter alia – carbon pricing and forestry schemes or other payments for ecosystem services (PES) initiatives; diverse urban socio-ecological metabolisms in the form of ‘green’ gentrification, resilience, or ‘sustainable cities’ planning arrangements; mobilities related to ecotourism, refuge-seeking, and/or environmental displacement; biofuels and renewable energy; ‘climate smart agriculture’ and landscape conservation approaches; ‘neoliberal’ conservation or environmental governance strategies.
• Drivers and consequences of the emergence of green capitalism,such as effects on socioeconomic inequality; conflict, contestations, and ‘green violence’; environmental securitization or militarization; altered patterns of resource access, including along class and gender lines; shifting relations between capital, civil society, and the state; financial crises under conditions of global environmental change; dynamics of land, ‘green’ and water ‘grabbing’ or acquisition; intersections between past and present varieties of green capitalism and ‘environmental’ colonialism.
• Challenges for and pathways to alternative sustainabilities,such as those rooted in degrowth, postcolonialism or decolonial thought, eco-Marxism, feminism, anarchism, and environmental justice; synergies and tensions between movements of workers, peasants and indigenous peoples; support and opposition to various alternatives from both ‘above’ and ‘below’; prospects for resistances and contestations operating locally as well as across places, spaces, and scales; emerging or mutating forms of rural and urban populism on the political ‘right’ as well as the left; new racisms and identity-based antagonisms in both the Global North and South.
• Conceptual, political and methodological reflections about the role of twenty-first century political ecologies vis-à-vis alternative sustainabilities, including those examining promises and complications of ‘engaged’ political ecologies; methodological implications of combined scholarship and activism, as well as other methodological and study design challenges in political ecology; the prefiguration of ‘alternative political ecologies’ and scholarly practices to synergize with ‘alternative sustainabilities’.

We invite paper and full panel proposals for this conference. Abstracts for paper proposals should be approximately 300 words and include author affiliations and contact information. Panel proposals should include a brief description of the session theme, and a maximum of 4 paper abstracts for 1 panel. Please send these to politicalecology18@gmail.com before 15 December 2017.

Keynote speakers:

1. Paige West (Barnard College and Columbia University, USA)
2. Tania Murray Li (University of Toronto, Canada)
3. Ashish Kothari (Kalpavriksh, India)

Organizing committee 

Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences: Tor A. Benjaminsen, Connor Joseph Cavanagh, Mikael Bergius, Jill T. Buseth, Shai Divon

Oslo and Akershus University College: Hanne Svarstad, Roy Krøvel, Thorgeir Kolshus, Andreas Ytterstad, Berit Aasen

Centre for Environment and Development (SUM), University of Oslo: Mariel Aguilar Støen, Susanne Normann, Jostein Jakobsen

 Advisory board

Bram Büscher (Wageningen University, the Netherlands)
Christine Noe (University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)
Denis Gautier (CIRAD, Montpellier, France)
Sian Sullivan (Bath Spa University, UK)
Nitin Rai (ATREE, India)

Kathleen McAfee (San Francisco State University, USA)
Simon Batterbury (Lancaster University, UK)
Tracey Osborne (University of Arizona, USA)
Wendy Harcourt (ISS, Erasmus University, the Netherlands)
Adrian Nel (University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa)
Andrea Nightingale (University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden)
Wolfram Dressler (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Rosaleen Duffy (University of Sheffield, UK)
Ashish Kothari (Kalpavriksh, India)
Susan Paulson (University of Florida, USA)
Robert Fletcher (Wageningen University, the Netherlands)
Amber Huff (IDS, University of Sussex, UK)
Amita Baviskar (Institute for Economic Growth, India)
Paul Robbins (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
Frances Cleaver (University of Sheffield, UK)
Maano Ramutsindela (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
Peter Wilshusen (Bucknell University, USA)
Noella Gray (University of Guelph, Canada)
Marta Irving (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Dan Brockington (University of Sheffield, UK)
Kristen Lyons (University of Queensland, Australia)
Esteve Corbera (ICTA, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)
Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza (Duke University, USA)
Scott Prudham (University of Toronto, Canada)
Lyla Mehta (IDS, University of Sussex, UK)
Jim Igoe (University of Virginia, USA)
Catherine Corson (Mount Holyoke College, USA)
Elizabeth Lunstrum (York University, Canada)
Jun Borras (ISS, Erasmus University, the Netherlands)
Leah Horowitz (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
David Tumusiime (Makerere University, Uganda)
Ken MacDonald (University of Toronto, Canada)
Marja Spierenburg (Radboud University, the Netherlands)
Ben Neimark (Lancaster University, UK)
Isabelle Anguelovski (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)
Robin Roth (University of Guelph, Canada)
Christos Zografos (Johns Hopkins University – Pompeu Fabra University, Spain)
Jessica Dempsey (University of British Columbia, Canada)

Bill Adams (University of Cambridge, UK)

Place and venue: The Norwegian capital of Oslo is beautifully situated on the coastal Oslofjord, straddling the scenic Akerselva river and surrounded by forests and cultural landscapes. The Oslo and Akershus University College is exceptionally well-situated in the centre of the city, within walking distance of major landmarks and attractions.

About POLLEN: The Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) is an umbrella organisation of political ecology researchers, groups, projects, networks and ‘nodes’ across the globe. As the name suggests, POLLEN seeks to provide a platform for the ‘cross fertilization’ of ideas where the world’s many rich and diverse intellectual traditions of environmental thought can come together, discuss, and debate the latest developments in the field. For more information or to sign up for (free!) membership in the network, please visit https://politicalecologynetwork.com/

Final CFP: AAG 2018
Contesting Border Formation(s): Territory, Crises, and Resistance

Co-organizers:
Vera Smirnova, Urban Affairs and Planning, Virginia Tech
Jared Keyel, Government and International Affairs, Virginia Tech

Engaging your audience: Finding meaning in the Geographical film

American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting

New Orleans 2018

Digital video is expected to account for nearly 80 percent of global internet traffic by 2020 (Cisco 2017), and its use is rapidly transforming the way geographers carry out research and present it to a wider audience. These changes have permeated all levels of teaching and research practice leading to urgent calls within the discipline to pay more attention to our media literacy (Lukinbeal 2014) as well as contributing to a renewed scrutiny of the categorisation of video and moving-mage research as a visual method (Jacobs 2015). While this has led to a growing interest in the way that filmmaking itself is changing the relationship between researcher and participant, it also raises new challenges in terms of measuring how audiences engage with geographical films. When geographers use or produce video for teaching or presenting their research, how can we measure and assess its impact – what kind of engagement is taking place with the audience and what tools are available to help us find out.

This session aims to explore the connections between the process of making a film but also seeks to find out answers to how we can speak about audience engagement. This call therefore is for papers (but also other formats such as interactive documentaries, short films, videoclips, performances, maps or apps) that explore the interconnections between the production of digital film and video and its reception as a form of geographical teaching tool.

Please send a 300-word abstract as soon as possible following AAG guidelines Jessica Jacobs j.jacobs@qmul.ac.uk and Joseph Palis jepalis@up.edu.ph

General Registration details below:

1. Register online with the AAG to obtain a PIN.
2. Email Presenter Identification Number (PIN) and abstract to Joseph Palis jepalis@up.edu.ph and Jessica Jacobs j.jacobs@qmul.ac.uk