CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
International Conference on Geographical Studies
15-16 November 2024
Via Zoom
SITUATED-IN-PRACTICE: GEOGRAPHY PRAXIS, MAPPING, AND DOING
Twenty years ago, Eric Sheppard challenged geographers with this call to action: “[I]f we take seriously the idea that good geographic practice entails giving voice to the widest possible variety of situated knowledges, then fieldwork should involve people in the places we study as full participants in our research—challenging the hierarchy of expertise that is presumed to separate academics from their informants” (2004, p. 744). As we strive to animate, engage and co-produce spaces and places that give voice and agency to various situated knowledges in the world we inhabit, oftentimes we find ourselves in particular junctures where we question whether our end goals attend to emancipatory and liberatory ecologies against spatial injustices. How do we ensure these goals are in place? How do we practice geography?
As in lessons gained from multiverses, the ways to enact geographical practices can be diverse, plural and multi-scalar. For instance, and in reference to Sheppard’s point, in what ways can field respondents be fully acknowledged and recognized as co-producers of knowledge rather than as sources of information who will provide substance to a yet-to-be-written academic article? Would it make sense that for every knowledge co-produced, there is what Oliver Ibert calls a situated-in-practice ethic? Is it enough that one’s research is ‘critical’?
In her research on critical geographies of home, Katherine Brickell questions the tendency of geographers to map and survey spaces to spotlight exclusions, spatial inequalities, and dispossession but stop short at suggesting ways to concretise these mappings. She advocates that ‘mapping’ and ‘doing’ are mutually constitutive because both practices tap not only in illuminating and visibilising but also in enacting. As Brickell argues: “while critical geographers must arguably devote more energy to moving beyond the pursuit of empirical production and theoretical sophistication … ‘mapping’ remains an important prerequisite for ‘doing’ if interventions or otherwise are to be appropriately tailored and actioned” (2012, p. 238).
In the aftermath of the spatial turn and the radical geography revolution, more geographers, activists, and various community-based collectives, found themselves ostensibly engaging in various mappings and doings. Some undertakings attend to locating and situating the direst spaces of need during the lockdown through new cartographies to make way for food sharing; others engage in gathering geo-stories from the grassroots communities to facilitate opening of spaces to identify and hopefully rectify areas of core tension and conflict; while still others fight for the creation of independent and autonomous peace zones in disputed territories which emanate from mappings of peasant and indigenous peoples that point to the intricate webs of complicity among institutions of power that continually inflict physical, structural and epistemic violence.
For this year’s theme of the International Conference on Geographical Studies (ICGS) and co-sponsored by the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) and the UP Department of Geography, we focus on the practice of geography that offer interventions, mappings and doings, and activist and non-activist undertakings inside and outside of the academy. We solicit stories, map curations, film interventions, book panels, and academic presentations centering on a broadly conceived ‘geography praxis’ that engage across a variety of places, spaces and scales. Not only that, as Eric Sheppard reflects: “practicing geography … involves passion, compassion and inclusion”.
Send your abstract to https://bit.ly/ICGS2024Abstracts by 20 October 2024. All abstracts will undergo review and evaluation from a panel of reviewers. Notice of acceptance of abstracts is on 28 October 2024.
Your 250-word abstract should include the following.
- Name/s of author/co-author
- Institutional affiliation
- Email address
- 3-5 keywords
Registration deadline is 14 November 2024.
Payments:
For paying undergrad students: Php 300.00
For paying grad students and professionals (local): Php 1,000.00
For paying grad students and professionals (overseas): $40.00
Abstract topics that fall within the remit of our theme are particularly welcome. If your topic is not listed from the general topics listed below but intersects the substance of practice-based undertakings, send us your abstract just the same. In some cases, we might advise you which slant of your presentation you should focus more.
Aging in place
Agriculture and food systems
Agroecology / bungkalan
Alternative development
Carescapes and geographies of care
Climate justice
Countermapped storytelling
Art and creative interventions
Critical climate studies
Critical geographies of home
Disaster and riskscapes
Emotional and affective geographies
Engaged and reflexive fieldwork
Fluvial and river stories
Gender and sexualities
Geo-stories and geonarratives
Geografiyang Pilipino
Health, healing and alternative healing practices
Heritage tourism
Historical geographies
Manufactured landscapes
Literary cartographies
Ludic geographies
Local and alternative solutions to hazards
Mining and extractive industries
Participatory mappings and GIS
Performative mapping and fieldwork
Radical frameworks and embodiments
Rights to the city
Situating island studies
Transportation and mobilities
Urban ecologies
Violent geographies
Visual culture and media
Wayfinding and spatial cognition
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References
Brickell, K. (2012). ‘Mapping’ and ‘doing’ critical geographies of home. Progress in Human Geography, 36(2), 225-244. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132511418708
Ibert, O. (2007) Towards a Geography of Knowledge Creation: The Ambivalences between ‘Knowledge as an Object’ and ‘Knowing in Practice’, Regional Studies, 41:1, 103-114, DOI: 10.1080/00343400601120346
Sheppard, E. (2004). Practicing Geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(4), 744–747. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2
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