Calls for Papers, Submissions, etc

Call for Presentations - AAG 2010 - Best Practices in Applied Geography Education

Co-sponsored by the Geography Education and Applied Geography Specialty Groups

Unlike many geography courses, issues related to curriculum design, delivery modes, learning objectives, and evaluation of applied content present somewhat unique challenges. Although many of these challenges are present in traditional, non-applied content, the degree to which they present themselves and the frequency with which they arise are often considerably greater than their non-applied counterparts. Questions regarding best practices for creating, delivering, and evaluating lengthy field experiences; the use of collaborative relationships with government and corporate entities to enhance experiential realism; relevance and workability of applied scenario selection; delivery of applied coursework in online environments, and the sequencing of applied content in fully applied versus partially applied programs all present issues of legal liability, intellectual property rights, logistics, and even programmatic continuity are but a few of the challenges the applied geography educator faces. This session provides a forum for those engaged in courses they describe as applied, either explicitly or implicitly, to share their research, experiences, and insights. The ultimate goals are to bring together applied researchers and educators to enhance the applied geography educational experience and to strengthen the bonds among applied geography educators, researchers, and the organizations they serve.

If you wish to participate please contact the session organizer:
Dr. Michael N. DeMers
Associate Professor of Geography
Dept. of Geography, New Mexico State University
phone: (575) 496-5231
e-mail: demers01@gmail.com

Call for Papers - AAG 2010 - Worlds Apart Ð Worlds Meeting: Exploring the Science-Practice Relationship/b>

Organizers: Jennifer Brewer (East Carolina University) and Susanne Moser (University of California-Santa Cruz, Susanne Moser Research & Consulting)

We invite papers considering relationships between science and environmental decision making in policy and practice. Although much environmental policy and management claims to be science-based, and much scholarly research claims relevance to environmental policy or management, actual relationships between the two realms are sometimes tenuous, unsatisfying or difficult. A growing body of research in this area offers great promise, but also identifies significant practical and conceptual challenges. Nonetheless, scientists and professionals spanning the science-decision-making interface through empirical, theoretical, and practical efforts often find such work to be deeply rewarding.

Questions that frame this session include, but are not limited to:

  • What can we learn from empirical studies of existing science-decision-making relationships? How can divergent interests, organizational constraints, resource limitations, temporal mismatches, political pressures, communication problems, and other obstacles to science-policy/practice interactions be overcome?
  • What changes in institutions, methodologies and epistemologies might facilitate stronger science-decision-making relationships? What forms can the interaction take and what factors influence their effectiveness? What do we still need to learn about boundary-spanning organizations? About information salience, credibility and legitimacy? About boundary monitoring?
  • Do science-practice relationships differ between the US and other social contexts? Across organizational scales of decision making and governance? Among different environmental issues, such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, water resources, rangelands, forests, agriculture, oceans, parks, wildlife, hazards, mining, air and water pollution, or ecosystem services?
  • Should we be distinguishing between policy and management in these science-decision-making inquiries, and if so, why and how?

If you are interested in presenting a paper in this session, please send an abstract of 250 words or less to the organizers at brewerj@ecu.edu by Thursday, October 15, 2009.

Call for Papers - AAG 2010 - Reflexivities of Today / Geographies of Tomorrow: Graduate Students Reflect on Fieldwork

This session will provide an opportunity for graduate students and junior faculty to create and share knowledge gained through the fieldwork experience. The session is primarily conceptualized to review and advance scholarship on the issues that graduate students in geography are facing as they enter, exist within, and leave the field. We envision a review of how the fieldwork experience shapes the disciplineÕs future as evidenced by the type of scholarship subsequently produced. The objectives of this session are threefold:

(1) Provide an opportunity for early graduate students to learn about data collection problems and processes, including practical advice, experiences, and challenges. Papers contributing to this objective should be descriptive and aimed at stimulating discussion around particular field experiences, as well as sharing knowledge and skills learned.

(2) Create the opportunity for the production of scholarship surrounding the fieldwork experience for early researchers Ð those not yet steeped in the norms of the discipline, expectations, and experiences of being in the field. Papers contributing to this objective should be pedagogically oriented, focusing on the studentsÕ perspectives and how they learn by doing (in the field).

(3) Explore the contemporary power dynamics and critical reflexivities about which students should be aware as they produce knowledge. Papers contributing to this objective should apply theories of reflexivity to specific research processes and goals, including the application of different methods.

All methodological approaches are welcome, and we would like to see a balance among quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and GIS approaches. We are also particularly interested in fieldwork that worked with Òtraditionally underrepresented groupsÓ in geography Ð this could be according to age, race, ethnicity, identity, disability status, etc.

Sponsored by the Graduate Students Specialty Group.

Organizers: Kevin Keenan, College of Charleston, Danielle Fontaine, Clark University, Anna Cieslik, Clark University

Please send questions and paper abstracts of 300 words to Danielle Fontaine (dfontaine@clarku.edu) by October 20, 2009.

Call for Papers - AAG 2010 - Socially Just Sustainability

On Demanding a Politics and Practice of Socially Just Sustainable Development

Organizers: Hamil Pearsall (Temple University), Joe Pierce (Clark University) and Rob Krueger (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)
Sponsorship: Urban Geography Specialty Group, Political Geography Specialty Group

For nearly 20 years local and regional governments have, for better or worse, increasingly positioned principles of sustainability in some aspects of their planning and development practices. These often include: pocket parks, indicator projects, green architecture, carbon reduction plans, open space preservation, transit-oriented development and brownfield reclamation. Overarching development concepts, such as: "New Urbanism," "Smart Growth," "Compact Urban Development," and "Urban Sustainability," have thus emerged as operational definitions with much fanfare from architects, planners, policy makers and political elites.

More recently, critics of sustainability efforts have pointedly argued that underlying social relations constrain the reach of sustainable improvements or represent a new culture of consumerism based on principles of ecological modernization. For instance, the environmental justice literature demonstrates how "uneven development" plagues the distribution of environmental costs and benefits. In a similar vein, political economy approaches show how it now makes economic sense (i.e., the conditions for capitalist accumulation support this logic) for cities and regions to play the role of steward with regard to the ecological integrity of a place while discounting the disparate social impacts of their activities. Still others argue that sustainability represents a post-political condition, whereby debates over a "just" society are undermined by a tacit consensus.

While the concepts of social justice and sustainability have been wedded diagrammatically, analytically and in practice, social justice has maintained an ancillary position in many analyses. Issues of social justice are indeed recognized, but are often viewed as an expected outcome of the system (rising tides raise all ships?), and thus not addressed directly. In practice, results have been often been disastrous for those lacking political power.

This session seeks an analytical intervention into the social "injustice of sustainability." We seek to envision a "neo-sustainability" paradigm and politics that positions social justice at the core of sustainability analysis and action. We invite papers that fit into these themes:

  • Conceptual Interventions: The concepts of spatial justice, environmental justice, the post-political, organic regeneration, vulnerability and adaptive capacity/resilience among others would be appropriate.
  • Methodological Interventions: Are we missing opportunities to employ interdisciplinary approaches or multiple methodologies to these questions?
  • Case studies: In-depth case studies that show how collective political action transgresses politics and outcomes as usual. Case studies should have a strong conceptual framework to guide their analysis.

Please submit queries and abstracts (250 words) to Hamil Pearsall (Hamil.Pearsall@temple.edu), Joe Pierce (jpierce@clarku.edu) or Rob Krueger (Krueger@wpi.edu). Abstracts will be accepted until October 10. Final decisions will be announced by October 15.

Special Extended Program - AAG 2010 - Geography of Opium Poppy

I am putting together a special extended program or 5 of 6 session on the topic of opium poppy for AAG 2010. The program will be sponsored by several Specialty Groups and follow five general themes:

  • Poppy and geotechnologies (GIS, remote sensing, crop prediction).
  • Poppy and conflict (Afghanistan, Asia, the Americas, funding for terrorism and insurgency, security and poppy cultivation)
  • Poppy, farming systems and rural livelihoods (legal, illegal, drug, food, industrial crop)
  • Poppy and business (industry, agribusiness, illegal drugs, the 19 legal poppy-growing countries, the dozen or so countries where illegal poppy is found )
  • Poppy and culture (kitchen, garden, art, perfume)

Within those general themes there are many fascinating possibilities to explore. I would like to include papers, posters and films that examine poppy "The good evil" and the ways that poppy is intertwined in our lives and the lives of countless rural people of the world.

Papers with some type of spatial analysis with maps and of an applied nature will be considered for publication in International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research (IJAGR). If enough papers are received, a special edition of IJAGR is possible. I am also talking to the editors of other geographic journals about organizing a special topics issue.

Please contact Allison Brown (opiumpoppyAAG2010@gmail.com) for more information. Also see the web site (opiumpoppy2009.net) to see this year's horticulture of poppy conference being held in mid-September.