[URBANTH-L] CFP (extended): Mobilising the City Panel (RGS-IBG Conference, London)

[Angela Jancius]

Final Call for Papers (extended deadline)


RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2007
'Sustainability and Quality of Life'
28th - 31st August 2007, at the Royal Geographical Society with IBG,

London.

Mobilising the City: the politics of movement, fixity and representation
(Co-sponsored by the Urban Geography Research Group and the Social and 
Cultural Geography Research Group)

Convenors: Jennie Middleton (King's College, London) & Justin Spinney (Royal 
Holloway University of London)

The mobilities turn in geography is now well established and has provided a 
much needed strategic basis for a timely critique of place-based accounts of 
social and cultural landscapes, practices and materialities (Cresswell, 
1997, 2002; Edensor, 1998, 2004; Wylie, 2003). Some recent accounts have 
begun to explore the relations between movement and fixity (Adey, 2006; 
Urry, 2003) yet these ideas have been explored in a relatively narrow range 
of settings. Consequently there is a need to address these issues in 
contemporary urban settings and examine the politics and obduracy of 
particular forms of mobility and movement in the city.

This session seeks to examine these issues with empirically grounded urban 
research exploring five key questions:


. Why do certain forms of mobility and immobility endure?
. What are the lived experiences of particular forms of mobility and can 
such knowledges inform a more nuanced politics of mobility/immobility?
. What are the relations and affects between different scales of 
mobility/immobility?
. What are the space-time geographies of movement and immobility?
. How, why and by whom are different mobilities and immobilities 
represented?


In asking these questions we invite papers that discuss these key issues. 
Topics may address but are not confined to:


. Domestic mobilities/ immobilities of the home, garden and work etc
. Time-space rhythms of movement and fixity in and through modes and spaces 
of mobility (the car, the station, the plane etc)
. The obduracy of landscape, materiality and practice and representations of 
place and space in (re)producing mobility and immobility (art, film, museums 
etc)
. The struggles and contradictions between mobility and immobility and 
resistances to movement and stasis (eg. the geographies and experiences of 
migrants or disadvantaged groups)


Please send abstracts no longer than 200 words to Jennie Middleton 
(jennie.middleton at kcl.ac.uk) or Justin Spinney (j.spinney at rhul.ac.uk) by 
Friday 16th February 2007 (please note extended deadline).





Jennie Middleton BA (Hons), MSc
PhD Research Student
Department of Geography
King's College London
Strand
London
WC2R 2LS

Tel: 020 78481623
Email: jennie.middleton at kcl.ac.uk
Webpage: 
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/geography/people/phd/middleton.html