Aarhus University, December 4-5, 2019
A collaborative conference at the Aarhus University, Faculty of Arts
Co-organized by:
Ecological Globalizations Research Group https://projects.au.dk/ecoglob
Urban Orders Research Center http://uro.au.dk
Center for Environmental Humanities http://ceh.au.dk/
Danish Center for Urban History http://byhistorie.dk
Contacts:
Mikkel Thelle, Associate Professor, History hismf@cas.au.dk
Heather Anne Swanson, Associate Professor, Anthropology
ikshswanson@cas.au.dk
Additional conference organizers:
Michael Vine, Postdoctoral Researcher, Ecological Globalizations project
Mikkel Høghøj, Postdoctoral Researcher, Entangled Fluid Cities Project
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Dorothee Brantz
Director of the Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technische Universitat Berlin
Anne Rademacher
Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Anthropology, New York University
In recent years, scholars have increasingly begun to focus on the material
politics of urban citizenship, infrastructural service provision, and the
formation and transformation of cities more broadly. Adopting a broadly
Marxist approach to these questions, for example, many scholars have
explored the metabolic processes that connect cities to the landscapes that
surround them. Through infrastructural relations and the flow of energy and
elements these facilitate, the geographies and ecologies of urban
hinterlands have become deeply imbricated with the physical and social
tissue of urban sites. The scales of these imbrications vary across both
time and space, from local to global, and from acute, disastrous seconds to
the geological time of deep history. In the multiple processes of this
entanglement, the “urban” and “nature” become entwined to such a degree
that the analytical point of dividing the two becomes debatable. The
inextricable relationship between “the urban” and “nature” is also
fundamentally a political issue, such that the deep entanglement of city
and country not only produces its own emergent biotopes, ecologies, and
socio-natural phenomenon—something akin to a “third nature”—but also
generates new patterns of capital accumulation, political subjectivity, and
collective claim-making.
If this approach seeks to dissolve the image of the city as a
self-contained social and material entity, however, other scholars have
explored the material practices of political boundary-marking that bring
different scales and units of urban experience into being. Whether the
city, the region, the nation, or the planet, the divergent scales and units
through which urban problems are framed, solutions are imagined, and
services are provided matter greatly for outcomes on the ground. So, too,
do the intersection of human and more-than-human forms: migration corridors
that intersect with roadways, the habitat geographies that differ from the
nature zones laid out by planners, and the watershed topographies that
direct flows across boundaries of property and administration. The
interplay of these scales and units generates both challenges and
opportunities for urban governance, gives concrete shape to city life, and
constitutes an important point of leverage for contemporary social and
political projects. To this end, the conference seeks to deepen attention
to questions such as:
– How have urban-nature relations been utilized as a tool of governance
for national and local authorities?
– How have practices of urban nature-making shaped political
rationalities?
– How have the rise of new political ideologies influenced the
construction of urban natures and ecologies?
– How has the production of “welfare” relied upon the construction of
particular urban natures?
– How do urban-nature relations promote certain forms of political
subjectivity?
Furthermore, the conference aims to rethink “the municipal” as both an
empirical and an analytical category. From water and heat to housing and
education, the provision of municipal services and facilities are among the
most concrete sites of citizen-state relations. In this time of
increasingly unstable national and international relations, the
municipality is taking on an especially urgent role as a space of social
and ecological problem-solving. But while the municipal is an acknowledged
actor in conversations about planning, zoning, and gentrification, it is
less often treated as an analytical concept in its own right. We thus aim
to explore questions such as:
– What exactly is the municipality, both historically and in the present?
– What has constituted it key logics, dynamics, contours, and limits?
– How do municipal landscapes and infrastructures function as spaces for
the multiplication or amelioration of ecological and political possibility?
– How might scholars take seriously forms of urban analysis that
emphasize the metabolic interrelation of the city and its hinterlands,
while also taking seriously the municipal as an empirical and analytical
category?
Overall, this conference welcomes diverse contributions that explore the
intersections, exchanges, and dependencies between urban-nature relations,
the material politics of scale, and municipal governance. We warmly invite
scholars of all career stages to submit abstracts that explore these themes
in various historical and geographical contexts, as well as through
different theoretical and methodological approaches.
Paper proposals and submission details
Paper proposals must include a title, an abstract (max 1,500 characters or
300 words excluding references), a short bio (max 500 characters or 100
words) of the presenter including institutional affiliation, if applicable,
as well as the contact details of the presenter.
Scholars and researchers from universities, research centres, museums,
archives and other institutions and organizations, as well as independent
scholars and researchers are encouraged to submit proposals. Students at
the post-graduate level (MA or above) are also encouraged to submit
proposals.
Proposals must be submitted to the AU Centre for Environmental Humanities
via email at ceh@cas.au.dk
Deadline for submission of paper proposals/abstracts: September 8, 2019
Notification of acceptance: October 1, 2019
Registration will be via a conference website, which will be available beginning in late August.
Deadline for registration: November 15, 2019
For updated information, check the AU Centre for Environmental Humanities
website at: http://ceh.au.dk/