Call for Papers:
Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting,
San Francisco, CA, March 29 – April 2, 2016
Session:
Adaptation Hegemonies:
Knowledge, Governance and Development Confronting Climate Change
Organizers:
Kasia Paprocki (Cornell University)
Alejandro Camargo (Syracuse University)
Discussant:
Michael Watts (University of California, Berkeley)
As the threat and implications of climate change are confronted at both global and local scales, the epistemology of contemporary climate science is characterized by the following paradox: despite high confidence in scientific knowledge of the dynamics of global anthropogenic climate change, uncertainty prevails in our understanding of how these dynamics will converge with diverse localized ecologies and political economies. This uncertainty has become more evident in the emergence of new modes of governing in the name of adaptation, which today dominates the development landscape throughout communities that are seen to be at greatest risk. As many other forms of governance, adaptation has emerged as a normative process involving coercion, command, and control. Furthermore, it is fundamentally grounded in particular visions of possible futures, success, failure, and what it means to be “developed.” Under these principles, adaptation regimes delineate political geographies of risk and mold people’s lives in light of catastrophic and uncertain notions of the time to come (Watts 2015).This session aims at bringing together papers that critically reflect on adaptation as a hegemonic mode of governance, and that problematize its (dis)articulations with local/global political economic processes.
Questions we seek to examine include (but are not limited to):
In what ways is adaptation science “new”?How are calls, claims and programs for adaptation embedded in historical patterns of development?
What is the relationship between adaptation regimes and the present and future of capitalism?
What is the role of the state in the formation and legitimation of adaptation regimes of governance?
How are science and knowledge mobilized in pursuit of adaptation hegemonies?
In what ways are these hegemonies locally adopted, resisted, or reconfigured?
Watts, M. (2015). Now and then: the origins of political ecology and the rebirth of adaptation as a form of thought. In Perreault, T., Bridge, G. and McCarthy, J. (eds) 2015, The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology, pp 19-50. London: Routledge.
We invite potential presenters to submit their abstracts (500 words max) to kp354@cornell.edu andfacama
rg@syr.edu by Sunday, October 4th. We will confirm participation by Friday, October 16th.
