Reblogged from Society and Space - Environment and Planning D:

Reblogged from Pop Theory:

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What difference, I wonder, has the publication in English of Foucault’s lecture course on The Birth of Biopolitics, which aren’t, after all, actually about biopolitics, made to ‘hegemonic’ theoretical accounts of the rise and spread and future of neoliberalism? The newly available ‘voice’ of Foucault in these and other lecture courses might well support the established interpretative conventions under which neoliberalism appears as an object of critical approbation.

Read more… 5,271 more words

Clive Barnett offers some really interesting and useful observations concerning the relative importance and/or impact of the publication, in English, of Foucault's lecture course on The Birth of Biopolitics to accounts of neoliberalism.

The term post-phenonenology has been floating around for a number of years in geography (see the work of John Wylie and Mitch Rose) and other disciplines such as Philosophy and Science and Technology Studies (see for example the work of Don Ihde). Paul and myself both came to the term during our theses, although quite independently of one another. Myself through the work of Heidegger and Paul through the work of Husserl.

The session should be a good opportunity to think about what the term might mean and what it could offer contemporary human geography.

Please visit James’ blog to read more.

With this aim in mind, in the next few posts we will collect some existing useful work from the blogs of fellow geographers that opens some insights into contemporary theoretical interests within human geography.

Attendance and refreshments at the workshop are FREE, but prior registration is required (for lunch numbers etc.).  Please email Richard Powell (richard.powell@ouce.ox.ac.uk) to reserve a place as soon as possible, and by 31 MAY 2012 at the latest.

The HPGRG Committee are also pleased to announce that a number of bursaries are available to support the travel costs of postgraduates, postdoctoral fellows and early career researchers attending the workshop. Applicants should send full name, position, contact details, estimate of travel costs and a statement (100 words maximum) of research interests and why you wish to attend the seminar to Richard Powell (richard.powell@ouce.ox.ac.uk) by FRIDAY 18 MAY 2012.

The focus of the workshop is to discuss if there is a geographical canon and thus poses questions such as:

Did geography have a canon that has been forgotten? Or did it never have one? Or was there just a weak canon? And if there is/was a geographical canon, what/who should be on it? Why? Why has there been such relative reluctance to enforce a canon, in comparison to related fields? What sorts of implications have disagreements about a geographical canon had for the disciplinary community? Have historians of geography spent too much time in recent years investigating the hidden histories and micropractices of geography, to lose the bigger picture?

We believe that the wider context of higher education across the UK, the rest of Europe and North America, and its implications for Geography in particular, make this an important moment for further consideration of these questions in their intellectual and political contexts by as a wide a community as possible, including geographers and related practitioners.

The format for the event involves six contributors, each speaking for 30 minutes, with 15 minutes for discussion of each paper. There will also be an extensive audience discussion session, providing plenty of time for audience interaction.

Workshop Schedule: The Geographical Canon?

Venue: JCR Lecture Theatre, St Catherine’s College, Oxford – Friday 15 June 2012

More information is available on the Oxford School of Geography and the Environment website.

Doctoral research programme

• Funding to support seven PhD studentships with a focus on learning and teaching research: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/doctoral-programme

International scholarship scheme

• Funding to facilitate scholarship of learning and teaching abroad, with a view to developing practice in the UK: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/international-scholarship-scheme

Seminar and workshop series

• Open call for psychology workshops. £1000 grant available plus additional £500 to cover speaker travel: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/funding#seminar

Academic associates

• Your opportunity to work for HEA on a consultancy basis, to make a difference to learning and teaching in UK Universities: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/academic-associates

UK travel grants

• Funding available for individuals and teams to attend learning and teaching development events: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/travel-fund

Teaching Development Grants

• Individual bids: call opens 3 January 2012. Up to £7k for successful bids: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/funding#tdg
• Collaborative grants: call opens 27 February 2012. Up to £60k for successful bids: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/funding#tdg

HEA conferences

• HEA STEM conference 12-13 April 2012, Imperial College, London. Online booking available at: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2012/academyevents/STEM_annual_conf
• HEA annual conference 3-4 July 2012, University of Manchester The call for sessions will open at the end of November and close on 13 January 2012. Online bookings will open 17 February 2012: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/annual-conference

HEA Geography and Earth Sciences events

• Education for sustainable development workshop 16th February 2012, Bath Spa. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2012/16_Feb_HEA_STEM_Bath_Spa

Keep in touch

• Email: helen.walkington(at)heacademy.ac.uk
• Subscribe to receive updates: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/my_academy

With thanks to the SCGRG team for posting this and Dr Helen Walkington of the HEA for her presentation to the RGS-IBG Research Sub-Committee meeting in January 2012.

University of Nottingham

This is a call for papers for the RGS-IBG Postgraduate Forum Mid-term Conference, to be hosted over the weekend of 20th – 22nd April 2012 at the School of Geography, Nottingham University. The aim of the conference is to provide a welcoming, relaxed and supportive environment for postgraduates to present any aspect of their research to their peers.

Papers with any theme on any topic within geography or a related discipline are invited, and postgraduates should feel comfortable presenting their work at any stage of its development. We would also welcome any papers or posters which deal with this year’s conference theme: ‘Geographical Reflections’. This could include:

• How has postgraduate work furthered debates in geography?
• How have postgraduates developed new and innovative methodologies?
• How has postgraduate research challenged previous geographical work?
• How can reflecting on past debates inform our understanding of present and future geographies?

This broad theme is designed to appeal to postgraduates at any stage of their degree working in or on geographical topics, from both the physical and human domains of geography, and to all related disciplines.

As well as the paper sessions we will also run several interactive workshops covering a range of topics such as publishing during your PhD, practical tips for teaching and demonstrating, common methodological approaches and issues and securing post-PhD grant funding.

We are delighted to announce that Nick Clifford (Professor of Physical Geography, King’s College London) will present the pre-conference plenary to the conference theme of ‘Geographical Reflections’ on the evening of Friday 20th April.

The RGS-IBG Mid Term Conference event has been kindly sponsored by the University of Nottingham Graduate School, the School of Geography and the RGS-IBG Postgraduate Forum.

The guidelines for abstract submission are as follows:

Papers: Papers should be no more than 10 minutes in length with 5 additional minutes allocated for discussion afterwards. Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be submitted to RGSmidterm2012@nottingham.ac.uk

Posters: Posters should be A0 in size. They will be mounted on display boards throughout the day and presenters will be allocated a 15 minute slot in which to answer questions. Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be submitted to RGSmidterm2012@nottingham.ac.uk

The deadline for paper and poster abstract submissions is 5pm 3rd February 2012.

ALL DELEGATES MUST REGISTER BEFORE SUBMITTING AN ABSTRACT: please see http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/geography/research/rgs-ibg-postgraduate-conference/rgs-ibg-postgraduate-mid-term-conference-2012.aspx for registration forms and further details.

As HPGRG members may know, the ESRC is currently undertaking a review of UK human geography in partnership with the AHRC and the RGS-IBG, the latest in a series of subject-based reviews. This is intended to ‘highlight the standing and contribution of UK human geography against international benchmarks’, and to ‘identify ways of enhancing performance and capacity, and promoting future research agendas’. This review is being undertaken by an international panel of eight academics, chaired by Professor David Ley from UBC, and is independent of the REF exercise.

ESRC are commissioning a number of sub-disciplinary overviews which will inform the work of the panel, including a review of research in history and philosophy of geography which I have been asked to undertake. Subject to a tight schedule, I am encouraged to liaise with senior academics and appropriate study groups in order to gauge views on a number of key issues, and to produce a brief report by 27 February.

This is potentially an important exercise, and it is obviously vital that UK history & philosophy of geography is fully represented in the review. I would therefore value any comments or observations from HPGRG members on the following questions posed by ESRC:

1. How has research in UK history & philosophy of geography developed over the last 10 years, and what are its major strengths and weaknesses?

2. What are the key academic outputs in history & philosophy of geography (including books and other outputs) which have ‘made important contributions to scholarship and/or have helped to set or move intellectual agendas?’

3. Are there good examples of key non-academic impacts of research in history & philosophy of geography (including involvement with policy and practice users), including ‘changes in policy, practice, debate and thinking arising from research’. Indicative evidence on the latter would be useful.

I would be very grateful if you could send comments under these headings to f.driver (at) rhul (dot) ac (dot) uk by Friday 3 February at the latest.

The session, ‘Re-doing Biopolitics’, was rooted in conceptions of biopolitics derived in particular from Esposito’s text, Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy (2008). It was from the interconnected nature of livingness the text proposes, and the political consequences affirming such interconnectedness generates, where discussion began. Knowing, then, that biosecurity – making life safe – is not static, rather it is a set of ongoing practices (Hinchcliffe and Bingham, 2008), the session and its speakers sought to tease out the workings of those practices, with papers focussed on the empirical.

The papers presented were diverse and exciting. Charles Mather’s paper took us to sites in South Africa where efforts were made to reduce the spread of foot and mouth disease (FMD). Taking the UK’s 2007 FMD outbreak as his point of comparison, Mather went on to talk through the complex sociopolitical landscape this outbreak negotiated in its South African context. Specifically, Mather refers to a sociopolitical landscape in which the ways state and citizens interact determine the practices that state could employ when responding to FMD as a biosecurity concern, directing specifically whether to cull or vaccinate animals. Kezia Barker’s paper too addressed a space in which a political framework to securitise life was to be negotiated. Drawing on fieldwork in the Galapagos, Barker’s paper examined the ways by which the tensions created by movements of people and industry could be regulated such that they might coexist with the needs of a space, home to a unique and important ecosystem, for which stability, particularly in the context of protection from invasive and non-native pests and diseases, is central to its preservation.

For Olly Zanetti, variation rather than stability was found to be key to the biosecurity regime he discussed. Examining the way plant genetic resources are mobilised in practices of food security, Zanetti showed how, in a range of agricultural techniques, genetic change and difference were central to the creation of novel new food plant varieties, and as such were vital in the undertaking of food security practice. Though disorder was key to the biosecurity regime Zanetti outlined, that disorder was only useful because it could be known and understood. A similar theme underpinned Linda Masden’s paper, which focussed on avian influenza in Turkey. Masden examines how various knowledge practices are employed to link domestic and wild birds and thus plot cartographically ways the country might be bioinsecure.

Finally, Stephen Taylor’s paper was centred on his ethnographic fieldwork in an South African HIV/AIDS support group. Citing Esposito’s notions of community and immunity, he explored how that group and its incorporation into wider networks in the HIV/AIDS sphere works to transform individual bodies into a community of political actors and in so doing engendering an affirmative biopolitics.

This vibrant session drew together a broad body of work which examined the doing of biopolitics in numerous contexts. In a world where the falsity of a bifurcation of nature and culture is widely acknowledged, and where practices of securitisation are continuously climbing the political agenda, the session offered useful insights into current work in what will surely remain a pressing area of research.

I presented a paper entitled ‘Controlling dogs, protecting turtles: Contemporary biopolitics in more-than-human India’ in the HPGRG session ‘Re-imagining biopolitics and biosecurity’ at the RGS-IBG AC 2011. This paper stems from my PhD project, and examines two cases of public debate around human-animal relationships in the world’s largest democracy, India. While one case deals with conflicts around the control of street dogs (animals that are considered ‘pests’), the other explores conflicts relating to the protection of ‘vulnerable’ Olive Ridley turtles.

The paper starts by pointing out that we now live in a world in which the sovereign human right to do ‘what you will’ to nonhuman life is no longer unquestioningly accepted. This shift is seen in discourse around environmental issues and animal welfare and rights, and in policy and daily practice as well. In such a context, how can we understand power in human-animal relationships? How can we understand the always difficult issue of how humans share physical, moral and political space with nonhuman animals? It is in pursuit of these questions that the two cases of public debate are examined, in particular, focusing on the ‘how’ of power, and looking at how humans affect animals. All through, the paper works with the Foucauldian concept of biopower, and adopts a Foucauldian understanding of discourse and practice as co-constitutive.

After a brief overview of Foucault’s original work on biopower, the paper discusses some key aspects of the data in order to identify the manners in which these animals and their relationships with human beings are (attempted to be) managed in the contemporary world. It interrogates discourses about human and nonhuman well-being articulated in these situations, and points out that that the different discursive positions are bounded by conflicting normative objectives in each case. The debates, then, are about how the manage the human-animal relationships so as to achieve these objectives.

After this, the paper deploys Foucault’s methodological and conceptual work on power to critically examine the different configurations of human-animal relationships that are explained, advocated, and practised in these contexts. In doing this, it question the strategies and techniques of (bio)power that infuse human-dog/turtle relationships in an era in which human indifference to nonhuman ill-being is no longer considered legitimate, even while human exceptionalism pervades mainstream ethico-political imaginations. The paper then demonstrates how this theoretical toolkit clarifies densely entangled discourses and practices of care and harm that characterise the ways in which human-animal relationships are fostered and regulated in the effort to secure and improve human lives. Finally, it discusses how this empirical examination develops Foucauldian analytics for the study of more-than-human assemblages, and how such analyses, in turn, help query what is considered normal-natural-right in the context of human interactions with our nonhuman co-inhabitants of this world.

The presentation took around 15 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of questions. The questions related to the role of culture and religion in public debates around animals in India, and to the shifting categories of ‘good’ dog and ‘bad’ dog attributed to dogs depending on the kinds of human spaces they occupy. The presentation helped me clarify some of my thoughts about the data, thus enabling the sharpening of the analyses I am undertaking for my PhD.