CFP: Towards Transformative Knowledges/Practices for Sustainable Rural Futures

Call for papers: RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2008 - 27-29 August, London.



Title: Towards Transformative Knowledges/Practices for Sustainable Rural
Futures



Sponsored by the Rural Geography Research Group



Convened by the Countryside and Community Research Institute





Within human geography and the social sciences more broadly there is a move
to break up settled, and narrowly drawn, institutional, pedagogic,
theoretical, disciplinary and methodological boundaries as we come to
realize that addressing the intensely complex, hybrid, unstable (yet
intransigent) nature of reality calls for new knowledge
formations/practices. New views of knowledge are exploring/practicing
integrations of theory, practice, politics and methods into new
'non-representational' assemblages of creative movement.



Related to this there is also what Latour calls a 'pixelisation of
politics', where progressive actions can take place at many sites, in many
forms, and at different scales and in different networks. These actions are
(can be) pragmatics of knowledge/practice created within competency groups
clustered around situations of concern and/or potential. Academic attention
focuses on action already in process within communities;
socio-techno-ecological networks; and processes of governance and economics.
Can rural academics identify, join and add value to these? Can rural
academics initiate these?



This session seeks to explore these new terrains of theory/practice "which
matter", in relation to sustainable rural futures. In particular we invite
papers which report upon work where academics (perhaps in interdisciplinary
alliances) are actively working with (rather than on) rural actants (which
may include non-humans) in ways which seek to be transformative in some way
- not least in terms of sustainable socio-ecological formations.



Possible themes (amongst many)



Action research and rural sustainability

Participatory research and rural sustainability

Interdisciplinary research and rural sustainability

Innovative stakeholder engagement strategies

Working with humans and non-humans

Case studies of rural projects working toward sustainable socio-ecological
sustainability in the developed and developing world

Putting non-representational theory into practise (and other theoretical
methodological trajectories)

The ethics and politics of non-representational research





Titles and Abstracts of up to 200 words to be sent to ojones@glos.ac.uk by
12 Jan 2008





Owain Jones

mobile: 07871 572969
office: 01242 715315
home: 01761 472908

Research Fellow
Countryside and Community Research Institute
Dunholme Villa, Park Campus
Cheltenham, GL50 2RH

ojones@glos.ac.uk