This may be of interest to those planning to attend the AAG and researching the extractive industries.
Best wishes, Jamie CALL FOR PAPERS Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington DC, 14-18 April 2010 >From conflict to cooperation: Spaces of engagement, resource governance and >the extractive industries Abstract submission deadline: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 Organizers: James Van Alstine, University of Leeds (j.vanalst...@leeds.ac.uk<mailto:j.vanalst...@leeds.ac.uk>) Roy Maconachie, University of Bath (r.maconac...@bath.ac.uk<mailto:r.maconac...@bath.ac.uk>) Co-sponsored by the Cultural and Political Ecology, Development Geographies and Political Geography Specialty Groups Multiple and often conflicting discourses characterize the impacts of natural resource extraction on host communities. On the one hand, the extractive industries have significant social, economic and environmental impacts on the communities and countries in which they operate; on the other, if well governed, the sector can contribute to sustainable local development and poverty reduction. This session seeks to explore the geographies of community-company-government engagement in host communities impacted by the extraction of energy and non-energy minerals. Community engagement with extraction may differ depending on stages of the project cycle, ranging from exploration to closure. Often ‘engagement’ emerges as a sort of place-based accountability and scalar politics ranging on a spectrum from conflict to cooperation. In exploring this continuum, the session aims to gain insight into how engagement processes within extractive contexts result in distinct governance outcomes (e! .g. community-development funds, participatory monitoring schemes, site closure/interruption, etc). A broad range of papers is invited from different theoretical perspectives (e.g. local livelihoods, political ecology and political economy), including submissions from practitioners. If you are interested in presenting a paper in this session, please forward a short abstract to the organizers by Wednesday, October 21, 2009. Please direct any questions to the organizers listed above. James Van Alstine Lecturer in Environmental Policy Programme Manager, MSc Sustainability (Environmental Politics and Policy) Sustainability Research Institute School of Earth and Environment University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK T: +44 (0) 113 3437531 E: j.vanalst...@leeds.ac.uk<mailto:j.vanalst...@leeds.ac.uk> W: http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/people/j.vanalstine Find out more about SRI: http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/research/sri/index.htm
