Final CFP: The Relational North: Regional identities and political aspirations

Final Call – Abstracts due 9 February 2020

Are you considering attending this year’s Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society – Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG 2020) in London from 1-4 September? If so, kindly consider the CfP below for a session on the “Relational North: Regional identities and political aspirations.” Feel free to get in touch should you have any questions about the session or conference!

Call for Papers

The Relational North: Regional identities and political aspirations

Session Convenors
Ingrid Medby (Oxford Brookes University, UK)
Mia Bennett (University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)

Session Sponsor
Political Geography Research Group

Session Description
In current political discourse, regional identities and aspirations have witnessed a resurgence. Regional identities may draw on a range of elements including nature, culture and ethnicity, histories, and the built environment (Paasi 2003). Intrinsic to all is a relational positioning that is both geographical and social and which shapes and reconfigures borders of belonging.

Among such regional identities, positionings, and borderings are claims to “northernness” narrated at various scales and spatialities. Northernness, of course, is only ever relational, defined against a contextual south. Nevertheless, as new regionalisms evolve and regions like the Arctic even ostensibly “emerge” (Keskitalo 2004), the idea of north has gained in appeal. For starters, the circumpolar north has attracted attention due to its relevance to climate change, resources, and shipping routes – not to mention a history of romanticism and cultural fascination. At the Arctic Circle Assembly in Iceland in 2016, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon called her country “the nearest Arctic” nation, thereby drawing fixed latitudes southwards through affinities and shared histories – and potentially trying to distinguish Scotland from a Brexiting England. Likewise, ideas of England’s North, the Nordics, and even the Global North all embody different political ideas, alignments, and possible futures.

In this session, we are interested in work that explores how actors draw on ideas of the north in articulations of regional identities and political aspirations. Understandings of “north” are kept purposely open in order to allow a diversity of approaches and topics. We invite researchers to submit abstracts exploring the themes discussed above along with, but not limited to, topics such as:

● State and non-state discourses of northernness;
● Visual cultures, aesthetics, or cartographies surrounding political projects of northernness;
● Attempts by non-state actors to build, shape, border, and negotiate northern identities;
● Re-narrations of regionalism and/or northern identity narratives.

Instructions for Authors