CFP: Institute of Australian Geographers Conference “Landscapes of Change, Challenge and Creativity”

University of New England, Armidale, 6-9 July 2020

(Re)thinking socio-natural relations around all things justice: Evolutions, fragmentations and rapprochements

Session organisers: Karen Paiva Henrique, Petra Tschakert and Alicea Garcia (University of Western Australia), Mark Bailey (Griffith University) and Jason Byrne (University of Tasmania).

Sponsored by the Critical Development and Nature, Risk and Resilience Study Groups.

During the past forty years, we have seen a proliferation of social movements engaging with conceptions of justice and nature, including the civil rights movements in the USA, the Green Ban movement in Australia, the environmental justice movement globally, and more recently the climate justice and extinction rebellion movements, among others. Conceptions of justice in these social movements have similarities but also differences, mirrored in the theoretical lenses that have been employed to examine them.

This session welcomes papers that critically examine how justice has been employed by different movements and discourses and to what ends, and which assess their suitability for addressing the multifaceted socio-ecological impacts of the global climate crisis. We seek to question which/whose voices and interests are represented in the pursuit of different conceptions of justice (e.g., distributive, participatory and recognition) and potential pathways towards remedying issues, without exacerbating or engendering new inequalities and forms of oppression.

We welcome contributions that look inwards into justice-oriented movements and discourses (e.g., environmental, social, multispecies, and climate justice) to examine questions of representation, recognition, and autonomy – across privilege and disadvantage. And we encourage papers that look outwards and across different approaches, to critically examine linkages and potential tensions in issue framing – especially between the Global North and South – and that challenge how scale, space, place, and socio-ecological relations are made and un-made through different types of environmental contestation and appeals to justice.

We aim to identify new research directions to scrutinise multiple and intersecting injustices from a geographical perspective and are open to all who commit to justice in a time of accelerated environmental change. This will be a paper and discussion session. Up to five (co)authored papers are envisaged for the session. We would be delighted to consider an additional session, if the call for papers generates substantial interest.

Please submit your abstract (250 words) via the conference website and send a copy to Karen Paiva Henrique <karen.paivahenrique@uwa.edu.au> and Jason Byrne <jason.byrne@utas.edu.au> by 20 March 2020.

References

Angus, I. ed., 2010. The Global Fight for Climate Justice: Anticapitalist Responses to Global Warming and Environmental Destruction. London, Resistance Books.

Bullard, R.D. ed., 1993. Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots. Boston, South End Press.

Gleeson, B. and Low, N., 2002. Justice, Society and Nature: An Exploration of Political Ecology. London, Routledge.

Haraway, D., 2018. ‘Staying with the trouble for multispecies environmental justice’. Dialogues in Human Geography, 8(1), pp.102-105.

Harvey, D., 2009. Social Justice and the City, 2nd edn. Athens, Ga., University of Georgia Press.

Karen Paiva Henrique

Postdoctoral Research Associate

School of Agriculture and Environment (SAgE)

The University of Western Australia

35 Stirling Highway, Crawley 6009

+61 8 6488 2704 | karen.paivahenrique@uwa.edu.au