Hi all, Those on the listserv may be interested in this piece, which appeared earlier this year in The Professional Geographer.
Nevins, J. (2014). Academic Jet-Setting in a Time of Climate Destabilization: Ecological Privilege and Professional Geographic Travel. The Professional Geographer, 66(2), 298-310. This article analyzes the interrelationship among resource consumption, sociospatial justice, and what is popularly known as global warming by interrogating the ecological footprint of professional geographers, especially in terms of their conference-going involving air travel. In this spirit, the article introduces and employs the concepts of ecological privilege (as well as its inextricably related antithesis, ecological disadvantage) and dys-ecologism as a way to understand the roots and implications of professional geographers’ fossil fuel use and those of globally advantaged classes more broadly. To illustrate this, the article measures the flight-related ecological footprint of the 2011 annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in Seattle, Washington. In doing so, the article examines how professional geographers, in the form of the AAG, have responded to their travel-related ecological footprint. It thus highlights the importance of scrutinizing the complex and dynamic interrelationships among consumption; associated socioecological benefits and detriments and their systemic manifestations; and hierarchy-related and power-infused categories of race, class, and nation—and their spatialities. As one can see from the abstract, the piece blends empiricism about a specific, rather large disciplinary conference and its travel dynamics within a theoretical framework that seeks to wrestle with some of the social dynamics at play . Best, Patrick ______________________________________ Patrick T. Hurley, Ph.D. Assoc. Professor and Chair Environmental Studies Ursinus College P.O. Box 1000 Collegeville, PA 19426 V: 484.762.4323 F: 610.409.3660 webpages.ursinus.edu/phurley ______________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of DG Webster Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2014 8:48 AM To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [gep-ed] Virtues of academic conferences Hi Paul, Thanks for posting on such an important topic. It's an issue we've discussed at length in the Environmental Studies Section business meetings at ISA. We eventually concluded that face-to-face interactions do have substantial benefits with relatively minor costs (as Wil and Rich established) and should not be abandoned entirely. However, it is up to each individual to decide how to balance their concern re: climate change and their professional travel activities. Personally, I go to far fewer conferences than I could every year and, aside from ISA, I try to select conferences that are nearby or to combine conference and research activities to get more out of the miles traveled. I've also tried virtual participation on panels, though I think you may be over optimistic there. I've yet to find a conference or teaching venue where it's possible to virtually interact with the audience and speaking to a silent screen is an unnerving experience. Others in the section make their own choices on conference participation but I think that most try to maximize the quality of these experiences while minimizing the quantity of travel. That said, participants in ESS or the GEP-ED listserve are the proverbial choir on issues like this. Even APSA and ISA aren't such large venues when compared to meetings like APA and AGU or those of professional associations outside of the academy. Convincing the broader public to consider the environmental costs of their decisions--whether about travel or consumption more generally--is a core problem studied by many on this listserve and is a tough nut to crack. Continual self-assessment is critical, so it's great that you raised this issue, but we should not lose sight of the bigger picture. best, dgwebster On Sat, Dec 6, 2014 at 10:02 PM, HARRIS, Paul <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: At long last, someone in a position to do something has admitted that scholars/teachers jetting around to conferences is morally questionable (not least because today's information technologies allow far more collaboration than was possible at conferences even quite recently): http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/us/setting-aside-a-scholarly-get-together-for-the-planets-sake.html?ref=earth&_r=0 It will be interesting to see where this goes. Will it overcome the willful ignorance of so many scholars -- those who think that THEIR work is so vital as to justify conference travel -- that such voluntary behavior is contributing, albeit perhaps in individually small ways, to profound human suffering and death in the future through climate change? Even a tiny contribution to someone else's death seems to call into question conference travel (and most other travel, at least by auto or airplane). I've broached this topic on this list several times over the years, so I realize that it's not likely to get any traction, and that there will be all sorts of excuses for continuing business as usual (“How dare you deny young scholars the right to collaborate” [these are the same young scholars who collaborate 24/7 on their iPhones, etc.]; “Collaborating via video conferencing [etc.] just isn’t the same as talking in person” [but there’s evidence that collaborating remotely can result in more scholarly productivity] – that sort of thing). ISA, APSA and all of the other big academic associations, including those devoted to environmental issues, seem to have conferences as their core business models. They don’t want to change. And we scholars don’t help. We love our conferences, right? And we, like most people, always want to leave it to others, probably people in the future, or governments or corporations, to change things. Of course we don't think about it consciously (so as to avoid guilt, maybe), but our attitude seems to something along the lines of "I teach about environmental solutions, so I don't have to be part of them myself," or, even more powerfully, "My research shows that institutions matter more than individuals, so I can justify living as I do." How many decades more will scholars take these and similar views, and continue to set the wrong example? I wonder what our students, particularly those who study climate change, think each time we jet off to a conference? The word “hypocrite” instantly comes to mind. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:gep-ed%[email protected]>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- D.G. Webster Assistant Professor Environmental Studies Program Dartmouth College 6182 Steele Hall Hanover, NH 03755 phone: 603-646-0213 http://www.dartmouth.edu/~envs/faculty/webster.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
