[Geogwaste] AAG 2013: Call for contributions: The production of nature

[kate.parizeau at utoronto.ca]

Thanks Freyja - this looks very interesting...
Is anyone else looking to present on the social side of waste  
management? Perhaps we could pull together a session or two (sorry so  
last minute...)
With best wishes,
Kate

Quoting Freyja Knapp <freyja at berkeley.edu>:

> Hello fellow wasters!  This might be of interest to some of you given the
> intersections of biotech (microbial) with waste processing.  Please pass
> along to anyone else you know who might be interested.
>
>
> Hope all is well and thank you for sharing publications when they come
> out!  - Freyja
>
>
>
> Apologies for cross-postings. Please circulate widely.
>
>
>
> Call for contributions: Annual Meeting of the Association of American
> Geographers, Los Angeles, 9?13 April, 2013.
>
> *
> *
>
> *The production of nature*
>
> Sponsored by the Animal Geography Specialty Group, the Cultural and
> Political Ecology Specialty Group, and the Socialist and Critical Geography
> Specialty Group.
>
>
> Organizers:
>
> Freyja Knapp, University of California, Berkeley
>
> Mazen Labban, Rutgers University
>
>
>
> *We dedicate this session to the memory of Neil Smith, 1954?2012.*
>
>
> For millennia people have employed microorganisms in productive activities
> ranging from making beer and bread to extracting gold and silver. The
> design and deployment of microbial processes for productive purposes,
> however, has expanded rapidly in recent decades. Advances in biochemistry,
> molecular biology and genetics have produced a plethora of microorganisms
> capable of performing productive functions across a wide variety of
> activities, and have supported the engineering of new microbial processes
> in agriculture, medicine, manufacturing, mineral and hydrocarbon
> extraction, environmental bioremediation, and energy production, to name
> the most prominent examples. Such deployments of biotechnology have
> attracted increasing attention from geographers and others studying their
> economic, (geo)political and ethical implications. Besides the laboratory
> studies that have been developed in great detail within science and
> technology studies, critical studies of biotechnology have largely remained
> confined to the agricultural, pharmaceutical and biomedical industries. The
> expansion of biotechnologies in other fields and the enrollment of
> microbial labor in new production regimes, however, raise broader questions
> concerning nature-space-society and are therefore ripe for critical
> analysis.
>
>
> We seek studies of the creative role of microorganisms in the extraction of
> materials and energy that employ a broad understanding of extraction beyond
> extractive industry proper and that revisit critically the production of
> nature thesis: production of nature as production by nature. Some of the
> questions that we have been entertaining are: how does the work of
> microorganisms articulate with human labor in extractive activities? What
> is the contribution of microbial forms of life to the production and
> circulation of value in extractive processes, and what are the effects of
> the use of microorganisms on our understanding of labor exploitation? What
> political, economic and spatial determinations?past, ongoing or imminent
> determinations?give rise to the employment of microbial work in extractive
> production? What are the effects of such uses on the materiality
> (spatio-temporality) of extraction and the spatio-temporal rhythms of
> capital accumulation? What role does microbial production/reproduction play
> in the greening of industrial processes? What are the temporal and scalar
> frictions between microbial processes and human production systems?
>
>
> We offer those questions to stimulate and provoke, and we invite others. We
> are particularly interested in research that problematizes the boundaries
> between extraction and other forms of productive activity, biologically
> based production and non-biologically based production, human and nonhuman
> production systems. The session format will depend on the responses we
> get?we welcome research papers as well as shorter essays: research
> proposals, critical reflections, ideas.
>
>
> Please send expression of interest, inquiries and abstracts to Freyja Knapp
> (freyja at berkeley.edu) and Mazen Labban (labban at rci.rutgers.edu) by Monday,
> October 22.
>
>
> --
> Freyja Knapp, MLA
> PhD Student, Dept of Environmental Science, Policy & Management
> University of California, Berkeley
> email: freyja (at) berkeley (dot) edu
>