Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) Biennial conference 2022: Call for Session Proposals
POLLEN 2022: Call for Proposals v3 *ABOUT THE CONFERENCE* *When: *28-30 June 2022 *Where: *Durban, South Africa *Organised By*: The Discipline of Geography and the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and The Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) Secretariat at the Australian National University (ANU). Support is provided by the South African National Convention Bureau (SANCB) and the professional conference organiser is African Agenda. The POLLEN 2022 Organising Committee is pleased to announce a Call for Proposals for Organised Sessions. As in previous conferences, POLLEN 2022 will combine the objectives of a traditional meeting with the collegiality and dynamism of a less structured, more participatory gathering. To this end, this Call encourages proposals for Organised Sessions in a variety of both conventional and novel formats, aspiring to bring together perspectives and ways of sharing from across disciplines and geographic traditions, and welcoming contributions from within and outside the academy. Please note that a separate, secondary call for individual papers will be made in due course. *CONFERENCE THEME: Political Ecology: North, South, and Beyond* The contested notions of the Global North and South, comparative political ecology, and the production of political ecological knowledge are proposed central themes for the 4th Biennial POLLEN conference. This is the first time the conference will be held outside of Europe, and we aim to use the occasion to think with and through the geographies of political ecology research, as well as to revisit the perennial focus of the network on political ecological change in diverse contexts. The conference offers an opportunity to not only expand the POLLEN network and (re)visit political ecology’s own problematics, but to engage with and challenge received wisdoms and persistent dichotomies and categories (spatial, social, ecological, political, economic, etc.) more generally, aiming to critically engage, and where necessary disrupt, our continued reliance on them. ‘First world’ and ‘third world’ political ecologies garnered initial exploration in the early 2000s (McCarthy 2002, 2005; Castree 2007; Robbins 2002; Shillington 2011; and Bryant 2015), in part following Said’s insights that imaginative geographies are produced by discourses, historical geographical practices, and disciplinary institutions. These engagements in political ecology opened up questions about the relationships between spatiality and regions, and the ways we frame and interpret environmental change and conflict, but also the ways we deploy contested concepts of nature, the `here', home, and ‘the other’ (Wainwright, 2005). One contention is that the terms Global South and Global North can be dialectically and productively employed to capture a ‘deterritorialised geography’ of spaces and peoples negatively impacted by contemporary capitalist globalisation, and solidarities against it, regardless of their geographical location (Mahler, 2017). However, the terms can be dichotomising and reifying, and, given the contemporary pace, scale, and unevenness of global economic and ecological crisis, there is a clear need to think through and beyond ‘north and south’. As in past POLLEN conferences, we will structure the conference to encourage critical reflection around the entanglements and encounters of political ecology with a variety of theories, approaches, and philosophies, including but not limited to post-colonial, post-structuralist, eco-Marxist, anarchist, feminist, indigenous, degrowth, queer, and racial and environmental justice scholarship. We also invite sessions engaging conference themes with recent debates in political ecology and beyond: pertaining to multi-species entanglements, biodiversity crisis, extinction, climate, racialisation,(de)coloniality, biopolitics, green governmentality, the production and neoliberalisation of nature, uneven and unequal geographical exchange, and the envisioning of alternative sustainabilities for pursuing human and non-human well-being. In particular the themes of de-coloniality and post-coloniality are fitting in the context of the recent ‘Fees Must Fall’ student-led movement for free, decolonised education which swept through South African tertiary institutions. We aim to foster discussion around solidarities within and across the world’s multiple Souths and between the human and non-human, as well as scholarship and conceptual engagement which interrogates and cuts across conceptualisation of the north-south, nature and society, natural and artificial, authentic and inauthentic, expert and indigenous knowledges, and bodies and ecologies, as well as other axes of race, ethnicity, sexuality, kinship, age, caste, and identity. As in previous meetings, POLLEN 2022 will combine the objectives of a traditional meeting with less structured, more participatory sessions, and a creative and artistic component. To these ends, this call encourages proposals for *themed sessions *in a variety of both conventional and novel formats, aspiring to bring together perspectives and ways of sharing from across disciplines and geographic traditions, and welcoming contributions from within and outside the academy. *Key information * Further information on preparing your proposal - https://pollen2022.com/call-for-proposals/ <https://protect-za.mimecast.com/s/yroYCY6Xq4CNpX09t0Bv3D?domain=pollen2022.com/> Proposal submission deadline:*15 November 2021* Notification of accepted proposals:*14 January 2022* *Where to Submit Your Proposal: Submission Portal <https://client.conf-manage.com/pollen-2022/pollen-2022-proposals-submission-portal>* -- 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]. 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