ICGS 2024: Final programme now available

The final programme for the International Conference on Geographical Studies 2024 with a theme: Situated-in-Practice: Geographical Praxis, Mapping and Doing is now available.

Go to https://sites.google.com/up.edu.ph/icgs2024/home

The ICGS runs from 15-16 November 2024 via remote/Zoom. The ICGS is jointly sponsored by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS). 

Contact icgs.ph@gmail.com if you have questions.

ICGS 2024: Call for Abstracts Reminder, Part 3

Gently but gleefully end your association with a situation or place that feels oppressive.

That’s your horoscope for this week. As with most horoscopes, they can be applied to any situation and can be creatively practiced in ways that satisfy intensely personal goals. Rob Brezsny writes some of the best of this “burst of inspiration” that illuminates individual adventures. Witty, funny and perspicacious – what’s not to like?

 

So in the language of horoscope, let us issue our last call for abstracts for the upcoming ICGS 2024: In the coming days leading to 20 October, we invite you to map your psyche’s resourceful depths because you might discover the inspiration to bargain, mediate, and negotiate with élan. You will have a heightened ability to achieve your task. The cosmos may not have a quantifiable end but in terms of abstract submission to ICGS, there is an end to things as we know it: a non-negotiable deadline. 

 

Send your 250-word abstract this Sunday, 20 October to https://bit.ly/ICGS2024Abstracts. There is no extension beyond the deadline. Heed what the song extols to all bohemians: “no day but today”.

To read our original call for abstracts, check out this link.

Results of abstract acceptance will be sent to your email by 28 October.

ICGS 2024: Call for Abstracts Reminder, Part 2

This is a true story of a sickly old man who lived north of London. Every spring, he would feed a pair of geese from a flock of migrating birds seeking conducive regions to feed and breed. Every year the same pair of geese would visit his home, and he would unhesitatingly feed them. One winter, the old man passed away. The following spring, these two migratory birds were back in his yard. The old man’s neighbors who have been witness to this human-bird relationship decided to feed the geese themselves that year, and years after that until the two geese stopped visiting altogether. 

There is no conventional ending to this story but perhaps eternal life cycles can provide us a clue what happened after. But as writer Connie Jan Maraan reflects on the practice of writing: generosity of spirit counts in order to grow and continue writing, or in this case, feeding the geese, or whatever practice we happen to have fervent passions for.

Much like other fields of study or non-academic undertakings, practices can mean a lot of things: as basis for empirics and positivist-driven data, as creative and experimental, as third space, or as seeing the invisibilities of the tangible. In Mylene de Guzman’s study among lesbian call center workers, poor health conditions and emotional unwellness were not only caused by the exacting nature of working in BPOs and propping various economies but also from internal and often invisible discriminatory practices. With this line of inquiry, questioning and being critical of practice itself demand greater reflexivity, heightened mindfulness and creative experimentation. One can critique the performativities of mapping, ethnography and fieldwork; investigate the injustices of practice itself.

The theme of ICGS this year is focused on evaluating, reflecting, problematizing, as well as documenting new and emerging geographical practices; even revisiting outmoded, obsolete and antiquated ones made static by the sedimentation of time and of progress. So send an abstract to clue us what your research is all about. We love intellectual provocations. They can be place-based, multi-scalar, map-like, creative, visual, highly particular, even imagined. 

Our deadline is 20 October and there will be no extension. Do send your 250-word abstract soon to https://bit.ly/ICGS2024Abstracts

You can read our original call so you can be apprised of the requirements when submitting an abstract, in any of the two links below: 

https://philippinegeographicalsociety.wordpress.com/2024/09/21/2938/

https://updgeography.blogspot.com/2024/09/icgs-2024-situated-in-practice.html

References:

Bauch, N (2015). A Scapelore Manifesto: Creative Geographical Practice in a Mythless Age, GeoHumanities, 1:1, pp 103-123, https://doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2015.1069716  

De Guzman, M (2020). The L Words – Lesbian and Labor: Physical and Social Health Impacts of Call Center Work on Lesbian Women in Quezon City, Philippines, Philippine Journal of Social Development, 13, pp 1-13.  

Maraan, C J (2011). Better Homes and Other Fictions, Manila: University of Santo Tomas Press. 

Reynolds, R (2014). On guerrilla gardening: A handbook for gardening without boundaries. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

ICGS 2024: Call for Abstracts Reminder, Part 1

Show me how to do like you

Show me how to do it.

Stevie Wonder, ‘Do Like You’ (1980)

A recondite collective once set out to abolish outer space by drafting a manifesto. They said ordinary humans have been lied to ceaselessly and without mercy. Calling themselves the Committee to Abolish Outer Space (CAOS), their manifesto lists down guidelines based on an organizing principle/program. In a language, simultaneously serious and playful, they point out that our social and biological lives are eroded by capitalism, and outer space is like capital, what Marx called as “dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” Much like the process of primitive accumulation that created “technologies of power acquired through colonial conquest”, outer space represents the world’s ills and the vicious practices of humans and institutions of power.

Practice orbits our social lives. From ideas emanating from novels, online shows, ideologies, and ecologies, to engaging in theories and site ontologies, they influence the type of practice we engage in. The late Fredric Jameson (1934-2024) once argued that one of the practices of postmodernism resulted in pastiche. From practice to pastiche – the river is indeed wide. Practice, then, can come from various situations, provocations and predicaments, turns and shifts. In academia, practice gained re-appraisals in the dawning light of the representational turn. Everts, Lahr-Kurten and Watson contend that human geography has been enriched in its acknowledgment of the vitality of practice as a companion to theory. It invites the blossoming of new knowledge inquiries. In Dominique Amorsolo’s study of the Lower Abra River using historical GIS, ‘new folklife geonarratives’ showed that human practices assist in the river’s ‘natural’ trajectory. So that’s where we are now, and this is when you come in. 

Just like our earlier ICGS call for abstracts, practice can be one (or several) from a pluriverse of theory and praxis. So, send us your abstract that attends to the storying of particular and specific geographical practices. They can include but certainly not limited to creative pedagogies, post-human landscapes, surveillance and sousveillance, food and agroecology, resistance and refusals, playful mapping and ludic geographies, religious lifeworlds, remote and emote sensing, historical cartographies, queering spaces, re-wilding practices, carescapes and ‘care’-ful geographies, and various other doings and mappings. And oh yes, even transgressive performativities that Stevie Wonder wrote and sang about in his song ‘Do Like You’. 

Send us your abstract by 20 October 2024 through this link: https://bit.ly/ICGS2024Abstracts.  

To see our original call for abstracts, click this link to read specific details of the call or simply paste this link to your URL https://updgeography.blogspot.com/2024/09/icgs-2024-situated-in-practice.html

 

References:

Amorsolo, DS (2022). Folklife as Geonarrative: The Fluvial Lifeworld Confluences of the Lower Abra River-Delta and the Town of Santa, The Pennsylvania Geographer, 60(1), 28-53.

Everts, J, Lahr-Kurten, M and M Watson (2011). Practice matters!, Erdkunde, 65(4), 323-334.

Jameson, F (1993/1997). Postmodernism and consumer society. In Studying Culture: An Introductory Reader, edited by Ann Gray, and Jim McGuigan, 206–217. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kriss, S (2015). Manifesto of the Committee to Abolish Outer Space. Pamphlet. Print.

Marx, K (1867/1976). Chapter 39: Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist, Capital, Volume One, London: Penguin Books.

 

ICGS 2024: Situated-in-Practice: Geography Praxis, Mapping and Doing - Call for Abstracts

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

----

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