Geography Conference Research Articles

Making Space for Film with Film Geographies

In this article I will argue that the online filmmaking and screening initiative Film Geographies is shaping (and has been shaped by) our understanding of what a geographical film is. It has achieved this by opening up a previously unavailable space for geographers to make and screen films allowing the creation and curation of a growing archive of work that is a significant contribution not just to filmic geographies as a sub field but to the discipline more widely. Film Geographies was established in 2016 as an online digital platform for the making and screening of films by geographers and/or about geography. In the last eight years it has amassed an archive of over 200 short films and over 1200 subscribers from around the world. Film Geographies also collaborates with other disciplines with joint calls highlighting the importance of building networks for film practitioners and researchers within and without the academy. The mostly short films are collected via two annual calls attached to major geography conferences. The online platform screens film online and in cinemas and organises filmmaking training workshops. I argue that the origins of the platform on the margins of the discipline, and diverse elements of the Film Geographies platform, have created much needed accessible film space for geographers to make films, watch films and debate film and filmmaking, enabling participants to shape and influence a range of film-focused and practice-led contributions to the discipline.

Conference Organizing in the Hybrid Age: Lessons from the Fourth International Feminist Geography Conference

The 4th International Feminist Geography Conference, Pushing Boundaries, was held both virtually and in-person at the University of Colorado at Boulder, 15–17 June 2022. The goal of the conference was to bring together feminist geographers from around the world to share their work, exchange ideas, and build professional connections toward advancing feminist scholarship. In this article, four of the conference organizers come together to share their experiences with the process of organizing a feminist conference and the lessons learned along the way, as well as at each stage of planning. Our intended audience is people who have not previously organized a hybrid conference (as we had not). By discussing and addressing challenges and recommendations—including, but not limited to conference format, scheduling, budget, technical support, social media, and timeline—we aim to foster more opportunities for organizing inclusive hybrid conferences in the future.

THE SURVAKAR - MASQUERADE GAMES IN THE “SREDNO KRAISHTE” - VISUAL AND VERBAL DISCOURSE

report given by Georgi Svetozarov and Tsvetana Manova at the geographical conference “Geo Decade” 2020 – 2030, is a presentation of a centuries old Bulgarian tradition, which represents “Surva” feast. This feast is tied to ancient customs and traditions for prosperity, health and fertility. The report on the topic: SURVA’S MASQUERADE GAMES IN “SREDNO KRAISHTE” REGION - VISUAL AND VERBAL DISCOURSE, shows the differences and similarities of an old tradition in one municipality, but in several different villages. The text represents the living traditional masquerade games in the days of Surva in the region of “Sredno Kraishte”. The research is based on photo-documentary materials, which are a complete historical source. They are juxtaposed with life narratives to complete and flesh out the picture. This approach makes it possible to trace the performance of the custom„Survakari” in the villages of Zemen, Elov dol, Berende, Gabrov dol, Divlya and Peshtera from the middle of the last century to the present days.

Collaboration and continuous learning

Collaboration and continuous learning

Report of the Eighty-Third Annual Meeting: San Diego, California October 14–16, 2021

Report of the Eighty-Third Annual MeetingSan Diego, California October 14–16, 2021 Liz Ridder, Atsushi Nara, and Yolonda Youngs (bio) After a one-year meeting hiatus due to Covid-19, APCG members gleefully gathered, in-person and online, for the Eighty-Third Annual Meeting at San Diego State University (SDSU). Much to the organizers' relief, 149 people pre-registered for the meeting, with 66 online and 83 in-person attendees, plus several folks who registered in person. This year's meeting was unique for many reasons and was aptly themed "Geographies of Transition." Organizers Atsushi Nara, Liz Ridder, and Yolonda Youngs, each from a different California State University (CSU)—SDSU, CSU San Marcos, and CSU San Bernardino—banded together to bring a hybrid meeting format to APCG without losing long-standing APCG meeting traditions. This "experimental" year was part of a larger initiative organized by the AAG and its Climate Action Task Force as part of their Regions Connect: A Joint Climate Forward Initiative, which may lead to larger regional meetings in the future, to reduce carbon emissions of AAG events. As part of meeting registration, attendees could virtually attend the streaming and recorded sessions of the Applied Geography Conference and the AAG Regional Division meetings of the Southwest (SWAAG), East Lakes, West Lakes, New England-St. Lawrence Valley (NESTVAL), and Great Plains/Rocky Mountains. Concurrent paper and poster sessions took place Thursday and Friday in the Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union. Also known as the Union, the building opened in 2013, replacing the first CSU student union, the Aztec Center. The construction of the Union reused and recycled approximately eighty percent of the Aztec Center's materials, and the building is LEED Double Platinum Certified. The recent renaming of one of the meeting rooms created momentary confusion until a clever geographer updated the door sign to match the new name printed in the meeting program and campus maps. Once [End Page 163] meeting room locations were sorted, thirty-one in-person and seventeen virtual papers and eight posters were presented by authors from Arizona, California, Michigan, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Florida, Alabama, and Germany. On Thursday afternoon, Keynote Speaker Dr. Marilyn Raphael, Professor, UCLA, Director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and Vice President of the AAG, presented "Antarctic Sea Ice—How Important Is It?" highlighting regional patterns of spatial, spectral, and temporal variability, including the timing of advance and retreat, and positive and negative growth trends of sea ice throughout the Antarctic. These patterns are likely related to Antarctica's geography and the influence of the ocean and atmosphere, which are expected to change as the atmosphere continues to change. Friday's Keynote Lecture by Dr. Park Williams continued discussions on "Geographies of Transition" and the impacts of climate change in his talk, "The effect of climate change on water, wildfire, and life across North America." This year's conference also featured two special sessions on Friday afternoon. Dr. Atsushi Nara organized and moderated a hybrid-mode interactive workshop to identify perceptions about the skills and knowledge to succeed in geocomputation-related careers. The project is an NSF-funded collaboration through an Encoding Geography Researcher-Practitioner Partnership (RPP) led by AAG, SDSU, San Diego Mesa Community College, Sweetwater High School Union District, Texas State University, and UC Riverside. Dr. Dan Arreola organized and moderated a discussion panel titled "Donald W. Meinig's Southwest at Half-Century, A Reflection and Appreciation." Former Meinig students and scholars of his work Bill Wyckoff, Craig Colten, Paul Starrs, and Richard Nostrand shared their perspectives on Meinig's influence on their interpretations of the Southwest and the formation of their geographical perspectives. Social events such as the Women's Network and Graduate Student lunches provided opportunities to celebrate students and connect with new colleagues and old friends. The Thursday-night reception on the Union's 3rd Floor Terrace included wonderful food and drink, supplemented [End Page 164] by a spectacular view and live music from the courtyard below. The highlights of Friday night's awards banquet were the numerous student awards for outstanding papers and posters and student travel scholarships, presenting Chris Lukinbeal with the Distinguished Service...

Editorial

Editorial

On AAG Regions Connect, and the Geographies of Infrastructure

AAG - On AAG Regions Connect, and the Geographies of Infrastructure - On October 14-16, six out of nine AAG Regional Divisions, the Applied Geography Conference, and the AAG are collaborating to put on an innovative event: a simultaneous, networked conference of annual meetings with in-person, hybrid, and virtual components.

Transforming embodied experiences of academic conferences through creative practice: Participating in an instant choir at the nordic geographers’ meeting in 2019

This paper stems from cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration between community music and human geography which sought to interrogate and understand claims of social sustainability and social change often cited in evaluation reports of community music projects. The lead authors (Parks and Cassidy) took this dialogue forward by organising a geography conference session which incorporated an instant choir workshop to test how we might ‘do’ social sustainability through practice. Drawing upon ideas from both disciplines, the paper synthesises the reflections of nine participants in the session to explore the capacity of creative, embodied, geographical practice to transform hegemonic experiences of academic conferences, and to create a sustainable and inclusive community of practice.

A Disciplinary Perspective: Applied Geography and Gender Concerns

A prevalent culture of sexism within the United States continues to influence the working conditions of professional geographers. Long-standing gender bias creates daily toxic workplace cultures that limit the potential of geographers and the discipline. This research has identified several areas of concern within the subdiscipline of applied geography. Through a survey, three of those areas of concern were chosen by individuals who self-identify as applied geographers for discussion at a roundtable conversation during the 2019 Applied Geography Conference. The outcomes of the roundtable align with contemporary research across the broader discipline and draw on both natural and social science discourses. Roundtable recommendations to address gender bias in the geography workplace are also supported by literature and are presented here. These recommendations are tailored to offer strategies to the Applied Geography Conference to address gender bias within the discipline, and recommendations for multiple professional networks and mentoring.

Remnants Revisited: Guatemala's Landscapes of Fear

Remnants Revisited:Guatemala's Landscapes of Fear Rebecca Clouser introduction I was first approached in January 2020 about writing a retrospective essay reflecting on my article Remnants of terror: Landscapes of fear in post-conflict Guatemala (Clouser, 2009). It was during a coffee break at the Conference of Latin American Geography (CLAG) conference in Antigua, Guatemala. At the time, I began to ponder the shifts that had (and had not) occurred since 2009 in post-conflict Guatemala. These included the historic genocide trial of José Efraín Ríos Montt, the 2015 anti-corruption protests—which led to the resignation and subsequent jailing of then-president Otto Perez Molina—and the more recent disheartening closure of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) in 2019. Of course, since January 2020, the world has shifted not once, but several times. Not only would the CLAG 2020 conference be the last in-person conference I would attend that year, but the coronavirus pandemic has since gone on to infect over 120 million people, killing nearly 2.7 million of them. And in Guatemala specifically, at the time of this writing, there are more than 184,000 confirmed cases, with 6,619 deaths (WHO, 2021). The pandemic has produced landscapes of fear characterized by the eerily empty streets of lockdowns throughout the world, including in Guatemala. Barren images of normally congested zones, like the infamously busy El Trébol intersection in Guatemala City, circulated online (Hernández, 2020). And, as restrictions decimated livelihoods built on the informal economy, white flags denoting hunger and starvation began to dot the landscape of Guatemala as early as April 2020 (Abbott, 2020a). Then, as I settled in to write this essay in late November of 2020, international news headlines prominently featured Guatemala. Two deadly back-to-back hurricanes and massive national protests (one of which resulted in burning part of the National Congress building) captured the world's attention. It is not [End Page 259] new for Guatemala to be framed in a such a way. Popular media's simplistic narratives form broader geographic imaginaries of the country as endemically prone to disaster, corruption, violence, and general bad luck. Yet, as scholars have long argued, the realities of Guatemala are extremely complex, deeply tied to historical legacies, contemporary injustice, U.S. interventions, and enduring sociopolitical structures that enable and perpetuate marginalization, racism, and violence. Beyond headline-inducing moments of cataclysm, in Guatemala the post-conflict daily reality is rife with continued pain, struggle, and fear for millions. In an effort to highlight this quotidian persistence, in my original article I used landscape theory to examine the multiple ways in which fear and insecurity are interwoven into the country's landscape. Analyzing the examples of model villages, scorched earth blank spaces, clandestine graves and exhumations, and landmarks and memorials, I sought to emphasize how both presence and absence in the landscape can serve to reflect and reinforce a culture of fear throughout the country. In this retrospective essay, I revisit these examples to contemplate how things have evolved in the decade since my original article. a landscape of fear framework In 2009, I argued that using the lens of landscape theory, with an explicit focus on landscapes of fear, was a particularly productive point of entry for examining the profound legacies of Guatemala's thirty-six-year civil war, as well as the longer-term legacies of colonization and modernization that various actors have imposed upon Indigenous populations in the region now known as Central America for centuries. Drawing on Tuan's (1979) insistence that landscapes of fear are equally psychological as they are tangible, I unpacked layers of meaning in the post-conflict landscape of Guatemala, highlighting the presence of fear. I sketched out the implications of these deeper connotations, which manifest in inhabitants being "ever on the alert in the spaces of everyday life" (Pred, 2007, p. 363). Finally, noting the works of Crump (1999) and Till (1999), I described the importance of attending to absences in the landscape. Because power imbalances, particularly in post-conflict situations, lead to skewed control in forming the landscape, absences can be critical for understanding the threads of fear...

The pathologies of agri-business: A book review symposium

Lorimer, Jamie Mitchell, Don Guthman, Julie Wilted: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry. And to understand this, Julie focuses on the logics inherent in the commodity production (especially, of course, commodity production reliant on living things), the capital-labor relationship, the institutional imperatives governing the institutions of repair, political struggle, logics of path dependency, and more. Now the Pathogen Has Spoken: Commentary 1 I first encountered the ideas that Julie Guthman presents in I Wilted i in 2015, in a talk she gave at the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers conference. As with the efforts that Guthman documents by Californian strawberry growers to brand novel plant pathogens as Japanese, this COVID origin story links disease to foreign agents engaged in primitive practices. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Progress in Human Geography is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Kenneth Cumberland on historical geography at the first New Zealand Geography Conference in 1955

AbstractProfessor Kenneth Cumberland's presidential address at the first New Zealand geography conference in 1955 considered the achievements, aims and objectives of the discipline, which he positioned as a chorological science. This view of geography posed difficulties for the scope of historical geography, one of Cumberland's main areas of research. He addressed this problem in a second conference presentation, which has remained unpublished. This unpublished hitherto “lost manuscript” has been located and is examined with an eye to Cumberland's role as a disciplinary gatekeeper and boundary rider of New Zealand geography in the 1950s.

Sustainable geography in theory or in practice? Reflections from a participant at NGM 2019

ABSTRACT Academic conferences have a large carbon footprint due to long-distance travel by participants and contribute to increased consumption in other ways. With reference to Stephen Sterling’s distinction between education about sustainability and education for sustainability, the aim of the article is to address the question of in what sense and to what extent was the NGM 2019 conference on sustainable geographies sustainable in practice? Accordingly, the author draws on her own experience as a conference participant, information about a carbon budget provided by the host institution, and e-mail correspondence with both the head of the organizing committee of NGM 2019 and the environmental manager of the host institution, NTNU. The author argues that while the conference was about and for sustainability, sustainability in practice was not achieved to an extent that the conference could be described as sustainable in Sterling’s terms. In conclusion, the article’s contribution is to initiate a conversation within Nordic geography about sustainability as a scholarly aspiration and how to conduct sustainable geography conferences in the future.

Spatial and temporal tourism considerations in liminal landscapes

Anthropogenic geographic studies in tourism should consider the liminality of the experience. Tourism by definition means a temporal and/or spatial movement takes place. How the tourist interacts and behaves during this transitory experience is a logical progression into human leisure behaviour. Several recent international gatherings of geographers provide the foundation to explore liminality in tourism and we build on those papers in this special issue. The papers are varied in geographies, yet have a central theoretical basis in all things liminal. Invited papers in this special issue are founded on the research presented at two international geography conferences in sessions devoted to tourism. The American Association of Geographers meeting in Boston, Massachusetts in 2017 and the Royal Geographic Society with the Institute of British Geographers in Cardiff, Wales in 2018 gathered geographers from around the world to study this theme. The following papers give the most comprehensive geographic review in tourism to date and we encourage additional dialogue.

Intertwining globality and locality: bibliometric analysis based on the top geography annual conferences in America and China

Academic conferences are key places for knowledge communication, innovation and production. Since the papers from large geography conferences are an important manifestation of the trending topics and frontiers of geographical research, we break through the limitations of traditional conference reviews through implementation of a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of conference papers. This is of great significance for understanding the subject characteristics and communication modes of academic geography. This article argues that: the American Association of Geographers’ Annual Meeting (hereinafter referred to as AAG) and China Conference on Geography (CCG) have both similarities and differences in their characteristics, especially in their focus on specific geographical problems; under the influence of the conference history, academic authority, and institutional culture, AAG and CCG respectively highlight “globality” and “locality” characteristics, and there are partial common concerns and multiple interweavings on global and local research topics. Compared with AAG’s diversified technical applications and sub-discipline development, CCG has neglected humanistic thinking in the empirical bias. With the continuous intersection and integration of different disciplines or areas, the geography of each country in the future should jointly enhance the inclusiveness and openness of academic conferences to promote academic freedom and develop solutions to geographic issues.

On advocacy and engagement

On advocacy and engagement

Book Review: Limits to Decolonization: Indigeneity, Territory, and Hydrocarbon Politics in the Bolivian Chaco

This book review symposium critically evaluates Penelope Anthias’ recent text Limits to Decolonization: Indigeneity, Territory, and Hydrocarbon Politics in the Bolivian Chaco (Cornell University Press 2018). Through deep ethnographic attention, Anthias’ text evaluates Indigenous struggles for territory in the context of “post-neoliberal” Bolivia under the Evo Morales administration, showing the variegated and nuanced politics of autonomy in an era of hydrocarbon extraction and increasingly contradictory state-Indigenous relations. The text examines the “limits” of rights and state-led territorial titling processes to radically challenge the racialized extractive geographies that shape the Bolivian Chaco region. In so doing, Anthias’ ethnography provides a rich analysis of how Guaraní Indigenous peoples are reshaping their relations with non-Indigenous landowners and the hydrocarbon industry to advance new forms of territorial autonomy and self-determination with significant ramifications on Indigenous studies in Latin America. This book review symposium draws from a session at the 2019 American Association of Geographers Conference, featuring two leading geographers who share their critical readings of Limits to Decolonization with a conclusion by Anthias that responds to the written reviews.

Opening Address, 49th Institute of Australian Geographers Conference

Opening Address, 49th Institute of Australian Geographers Conference

Evolution versus entrenchment: Debating the impact of digitization, democratization and diffusion in the global fashion industry

Abstract In the report The State of Fashion 2017, written by Business of Fashion and the McKinsey Institute (2016), industry executives used three words to describe the current state of the fashion industry: uncertain, changing and challenging. Indeed, the fashion industry is undergoing dramatic transformations, from digitization and the rise of ‘see now, buy now’ fashions, to brands redefining the function and timing of fashion weeks, and increasing levels of global integration and competition (Crewe 2017). As such, the fashion industry has been recognized as a valuable lens through which to explore significant and ongoing changes to the production, curation and consumption of goods, services, and experiences (Brydges et al. 2014; Brydges 2017; D’Ovidio 2015; Hracs et al. 2013; Lavanga 2018; McRobbie 2016; Pratt et al. 2012). Drawing inspiration from this stream of scholarship, we organized four sessions titled Trending Now: The Changing Geographies of Fashion in the Digital Age at the Royal Geographical Society and Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) conference in London, 30 August – 1 September 2017. In these sessions, researchers and practitioners from a wide range of locations and disciplines – including fashion studies, media studies, cultural economics, business and geography – came together to share research related to the structures, labour dynamics, spaces, value propositions and practices of the contemporary fashion industry. While a range of issues were discussed, the sessions were connected by an overarching theme. Namely, the extent to which power in the fashion industry is expanding or consolidating. While there is a prominent discourse that states that structures, systems and spaces within the global fashion industry have been (and will continue to be) disrupted by new actors, technologies, practices and cities, we collectively questioned whether the fashion industry has really entered an era of democratization, or if established power structures remain entrenched. Through empirical case studies from a variety of geographic contexts – from India to Italy – about different actors and activities within the industry, each presentation contributed new evidence and perspectives to this debate. The discussion below distils some of the key themes that emerged.

First International Geographical Conference of North Asian Countries “China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor: Geographical and Environmental Factors and Territorial Development Opportunities”

This volume contains papers submitted to the First International Geographical Conference of North Asian countries on «China–Mongolia–Russia» Economic Corridor: Geographical and Environmental Factors and Territorial Development Opportunities” devoted to the analysis of fundamental scientific problems in the field of optimal ecologically oriented resource providing of the livelihoods and the quality of life of the population, the development of modern urbanized and cultural landscapes and the preservation of the natural environment in transboundary and outlying territories. The ultimate goal of the Conference is to find common ground and make constructive proposals for the solution of the geoecological problems facing the border regions, the development of methods for component and integral assessment of natural resources and the anthropogenic influence of the transboundary territories on the environment, the modernization of the economy of the regions and the transport and social infrastructure, the improvement of the population distribution systems in outlying territories as well as to establish new scientific relations and strengthen the existing international collaboration in the sphere of territorial development, and the environmental and ecological protection within the China–Mongolia–Russia Economic Corridor.The volume is intended for a wide range of researchers in the field of geography and economics, university teachers, students, and practitioners with an interest in problems of ecology, effective environmental management, and territorial development.