CFP AAG 2012: Geographies of Craft and Crafting
AAG Call for Papers: GEOGRAPHIES OF CRAFT AND CRAFTING Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting 24-28 February 2012 New York, NY Organisers: Doreen Jakob (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Hayden Lorimer and Kendra Strauss (University of Glasgow) and Nicola Thomas (University of Exeter) Sponsored by the AAG Cultural Geography Study Group and the Economic Geography Specialty Group. >From provisioning (sewing and knitting garments, woodworking and ironmongery etc.) to communal forms of socialisation (quilting bees, knitting circles) to local markets (craft fairs, farmers’ markets), crafts and crafting have been variously regarded: as peripheral (residual, non-capitalist) forms of production; as the locus of anti-capitalist politics; as an ideal model for cottage-scale entrepreneurialism; and, as the essence of vernacular material culture. When kept from public view, crafts have also long operated as a means of personal fulfilment, self-expression, and domestic decoration to celebrate and commemorate notable events in the life of family or friends. As such, the practices and politics of craft encompass a wide variety of forms of social reproduction and have been at the centre of a range of social movements for centuries. A critical awareness of these politics and practices has also informed the cultural appreciation of craft in the creative arts, and its more traditional variant of ‘folk art’. The emergence of 'third wave' crafting in the 1990s, and the meteoric rise of technologies and applications associated with it - from Etsy to DIY videos on YouTube - has seen the craft movement re-emerge as a social, economic and cultural movement of significance and scope. To date, limited but important work by geographers has looked at craft in relation to the fine arts and creative industries, mostly from cultural and historical geography perspectives. This session aims to bring together scholars from a range of backgrounds to grapple with the complexities and contradictions of crafting from a variety of theoretical, methodological and empirical starting points. In it we ask: What are the geographies – cultural, political, feminist, localist, aesthetic, economic, racial, urban, rural - of craft and crafting? The craft movement is socially and spatially heterogeneous. Such diversity raises a series of questions that might constitute an incipient research agenda. In its different manifestations how does the craft movement embody tensions, linkages and power hierarchies that both challenge and reflect socially-constructed categories of difference such as gender, class, race, ethnicity and sexuality? How do crafting practices and discourses vary within and between urban and rural environments, regions, and nations? How does contemporary crafting reflect and co-construct diverse politics, from radical feminist 'craftivist' to middle-class urban nostalgia to traditionalist conservative? In relation to labour, is crafting simultaneously invoked as a route to entrepreneurial independence and (as it has been historically) as an alternative to capitalist alienated labour? How is craft to be defined in relation to art, the artistic labour process and spaces of artistic practice (such as galleries and art schools)? In what ways and among which communities is craft used to encapsulate styles of life aiming to operate at a slower tempo, or that are retrospective in character? How far is the craft resurgence an expression of austerity chic – “keep calm and carry on crafting”? This session is intended to have a catalytic effect: prompting discussion, encouraging networking and bringing together work that represents a range of approaches to geographies of craft and crafting. We envision papers that address one or more of the following themes: 1. craft, labour and social reproduction 2. ‘craftivism’ and the politics of craft and crafting 3. crafts, hobbies and forgetting: vernacular histories and geographies of making in everyday communities 4. the spatialities of crafts and crafting 5. the influence of technology in crafting 6. the economics of crafting: its commercialization & capitalization 7. festivals of crafts/crafts as tools for urban and economic development 8. the changing social status of the crafter, craftsmanship and the master craftsman We welcome contributions that explore conceptual issues, methodological approaches and practice-led or object-centred inquiries into the doing and making of crafts. Please email abstracts of 250 words or less by September 8th 2011 to Doreen (dja...@email.unc.edu), Kendra (kendra.stra...@ges.gla.ac.uk) and Hayden (hlori...@ges.gla.ac.uk). Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. ___ Dr Doreen Jakob Visiting Scholar University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Communication Studies Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Special Report: A little house of secrets on the Great Plains
A fascinating teaching device: Special Report: A little house of secrets on the Great Plains http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/28/us-usa-shell-companies-idUSTRE75R20Z20110628 Kris http://www.facebook.com/AAGegsg
"Making Connections" Survey data available
*Announcement to Listserv* With support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, NORC at the University of Chicago is pleased to announce the availability of data from the *Making Connections* Survey. This ten‐year data collection effort has produced nearly 28,000 interviews with residents in ten disadvantaged urban communities at up to three points in time. The survey data are now available to approved researchers through NORC’s Data Enclave, a secure environment that allows access to sensitive data from any computer. The Foundation encourages interested researchers, faculty, and advanced graduate students to apply for access to the longitudinal and cross‐sectional datasets. We are especially interested in collaborating with faculty and researchers who reside in or near the ten sites. Please note that applicants must be affiliated with an institution that is overseen by an institutional review board (IRB). For more information, please visit http://mcstudy.norc.org. *Background* * * The *Making Connections* Survey is one component of a ten-year neighborhood-based initiative sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The survey examines mobility, social capital and networks, neighborhood processes, civic engagement, economic hardship, the availability and utilization of services, and child and adolescent well-being. Data were collected in a set of ten disadvantaged urban communities across the United States that are diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, immigrant populations, and physical and economic characteristics. The communities are located in Denver, Des Moines, Indianapolis, San Antonio, Seattle (White Center), Hartford, Milwaukee, Oakland, Providence, and Louisville. The *Making Connections* datasets include a longitudinal sample of households interviewed at up to three points in time between 2002 and 2011, as well as representative point-in-time samples of neighborhood and county residents. The baseline survey was fielded in each of the ten Making Connections neighborhoods, and in each county that contained the Making Connections neighborhood. The Wave 2 and Wave 3 survey was fielded in the neighborhoods only. Baseline data were gathered between 2002 and 2004. Wave 2 was completed between 2005 and 2007 in the same ten sites. The Wave 3 cycle was conducted between 2008 and 2011 in seven of the ten sites. Researchers are invited to apply for access to the data. We are especially interested in collaborating with faculty and researchers who reside in or near the ten sites. If you would like to speak with someone about the *Making Connections* survey data or application process, please send an e-mail to makingconnecti...@norc.uchicago.edu. Information regarding data access may be found here: http://mcstudy.norc.org/data-access/ Publications, working papers, reports, and presentations featuring the *Making Connections* data may be found here: http://mcstudy.norc.org/publications/
[Specialty_groups] Student Paper Competition 2012 - Applied Geography
CALL FOR PAPERS - STUDENT PAPER COMPETITION Association of American Geographers (AAG) Applied Geography Specialty Group The 2012 Meeting of the AAG, February 24-28, 2012, New York, NY The Applied Geography Specialty Group is sponsoring a student paper competition this year. The paper and its research should utilize geographic methods, techniques, or analysis applied in service to a real world client, while the subject-matter focus of the paper is open. One prize ($500) will be awarded to the best paper. The student papers cannot be co-authored with a faculty member but can range from a class project or term paper to one that has been given at any professional meeting in the 12 months preceding (and including) the New York, NY AAG conference. Participants are required to register and present in the AGSG Interactive Short Paper (ISP) Student Session at the February 24-28, 2012 AAG Annual Meeting. The Applied Geography Conference Board will award the student paper winner with a free conference registration to attend the 35th Annual Applied Geography Conference in October, 2012 in Minneapolis, MN, and an invitation to submit the winning paper for review and possible publishing in the Annals from that conference. The deadline for the submission of abstracts for the Applied Geography Specialty Group student paper competition is the same date as the AAG deadline for abstracts. To submit an abstract to the AGSG you must first register for the meeting. Please review AAG guidelines for abstract submission. Send an abstract of no more than 250 words as an email attachment and your personal identification number (received from the AAG after applying online at www.aag.org), along with a 100 word maximum statement identifying the applied geography components of their paper to Dr. Dawna Cerney at dlcer...@ysu.edu Written papers (8,000 word maximum) are due on January 1, 2012. The prize will be awarded based on the written papers and not on the presentations, and the winner will be announced at the conclusion of the interactive session. If any participants would like informal feedback on their presentation, please advise Dr. Cerney in advance. Both Master’s and Ph.D. students are welcome in the competition. One prize will be awarded in the amount of $500. All authors will be recognized for their participation. (See attached file: Call for Student papers_AAG12.pdf) ___ Specialty_groups mailing list specialty_gro...@lists.aag.org http://lists.aag.org/mailman/listinfo/specialty_groups Call for Student papers_AAG12.pdf Description: Adobe PDF document
