Dates: 6-8 July 2020
Location: Antwerp, Belgium
Website: Sensing the City
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 15 March 2020
Session organisers: Sofia Cele (Uppsala University) & Jan van Duppen (The Open University)
This call for papers invites contributions that think through the temporal dimensions of gardening in cities. We are interested in papers that address the sensing and shaping of different temporalities related to the cultivation of green spaces in urban areas.
First of all, gardens offer citizens the opportunity to tune into the cyclical rhythms of the seasons, of observing and nurturing plant growth, of changing weather and colour patterns. Allotment, community, guerrilla gardens, allow for the multi-modal sensorial explorations of naturecultures; and in doing so, they create spaces for slowing down, for a temporary escape from the pressures of paid work and social obligations (Schoneboom and May 2013), a potential space to resist the attention economy and allow for a moment to do nothing (Odell 2019). Yet, when we study the rhythms of garden, domestic, and paid work, do we observe eurhythmia or arrhythmia (Lefebvre 2004)? In the midst of these busy lives, how do gardeners manage to have time to garden? How is this often voluntary labour planned and organised? What (more-than)human collectives are shaped over time? Do new temporalities emerge in the intricate processes of this ‘becoming-with’(Haraway 2008)? And, what potential futures are unmade in the process of cultivation (Ginn 2017)? We welcome here detailed qualitative accounts of embodied practices, ethnographic studies, and time-geography research.
Secondly, in the last two decades, we are seeing a renewed interest in gardening in cities, not just from new enthusiastic amateurs and seasoned gardeners, but also from the professional field of artists, architects, designers, planners, and project developers. These new gardens are brought into being with very different motivations and political aims; we are seeking critical accounts of temporary community garden projects, mobile gardens, ephemeral guerrilla projects and art installations. What processes of governance create urban gardens, and what efforts are made to keep them in place, move them on, or dismantle them? What tensions can be identified between the temporal limits of these projects and the needs and agencies of the growth of plants? What labour is invested, and by whom, and in how far can this push for participation be seen as part of the neoliberal city (Rosol 2012)? Following on from that, we invite contributions that address the relations between gardens and urban change. In how far, are gardens implicated in gentrification processes? Do gardens accelerate, interrupt, or slow down urban change? Furthermore, gardens increasingly feature in future projections of the city, greenery has become an ubiquitous feature of the urban imaginary. What visual and political work does greenery do in the making of these urban futures?
Lastly, we invite methodological experiments and reflections on the potential and limitations of mapping time in the garden. How can we represent and analyse the temporal dimension of these multi-species world-making projects (Tsing 2015)? How does time (and the lack of it) play a role in our research efforts and outputs?
Submission details
Please submit your abstract of max. 250 words via e-mail to both sofia.cele@kultgeog.uu.se & jan.van.duppen@open.ac.uk AND upload it through the conference website via this link by 15 March 2020. Please make sure to select the correct session number “Session 62: The Sensing and Shaping of Time in Urban Gardens: Affect, Design, Governance, and Labour” when uploading your abstract.
References
Ginn, F., 2017. Domestic Wild: Memory, Nature and Gardening in Suburbia. Oxon: Routledge.
Haraway, D.J., 2008. When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Lefebvre, H., 2004. Rhythmanalysis: space, time, and everyday life. London: Continuum.
Odell, J., 2019. How to do nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Brooklyn and London: Melville House.
Rosol, M., 2012. Community volunteering as neoliberal strategy? Green space production in Berlin. Antipode, 44 (1), 239–257.
Schoneboom, A. and May, J., 2013. Working through the allotment*. ephemera: theory & politics in organization, 13 (1), 137–150.
Tsing, A.L., 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World - On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Location: Antwerp, Belgium
Website: Sensing the City
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 15 March 2020
This call for papers invites contributions that think through the temporal dimensions of gardening in cities. We are interested in papers that address the sensing and shaping of different temporalities related to the cultivation of green spaces in urban areas.
First of all, gardens offer citizens the opportunity to tune into the cyclical rhythms of the seasons, of observing and nurturing plant growth, of changing weather and colour patterns. Allotment, community, guerrilla gardens, allow for the multi-modal sensorial explorations of naturecultures; and in doing so, they create spaces for slowing down, for a temporary escape from the pressures of paid work and social obligations (Schoneboom and May 2013), a potential space to resist the attention economy and allow for a moment to do nothing (Odell 2019). Yet, when we study the rhythms of garden, domestic, and paid work, do we observe eurhythmia or arrhythmia (Lefebvre 2004)? In the midst of these busy lives, how do gardeners manage to have time to garden? How is this often voluntary labour planned and organised? What (more-than)human collectives are shaped over time? Do new temporalities emerge in the intricate processes of this ‘becoming-with’(Haraway 2008)? And, what potential futures are unmade in the process of cultivation (Ginn 2017)? We welcome here detailed qualitative accounts of embodied practices, ethnographic studies, and time-geography research.
Secondly, in the last two decades, we are seeing a renewed interest in gardening in cities, not just from new enthusiastic amateurs and seasoned gardeners, but also from the professional field of artists, architects, designers, planners, and project developers. These new gardens are brought into being with very different motivations and political aims; we are seeking critical accounts of temporary community garden projects, mobile gardens, ephemeral guerrilla projects and art installations. What processes of governance create urban gardens, and what efforts are made to keep them in place, move them on, or dismantle them? What tensions can be identified between the temporal limits of these projects and the needs and agencies of the growth of plants? What labour is invested, and by whom, and in how far can this push for participation be seen as part of the neoliberal city (Rosol 2012)? Following on from that, we invite contributions that address the relations between gardens and urban change. In how far, are gardens implicated in gentrification processes? Do gardens accelerate, interrupt, or slow down urban change? Furthermore, gardens increasingly feature in future projections of the city, greenery has become an ubiquitous feature of the urban imaginary. What visual and political work does greenery do in the making of these urban futures?
Lastly, we invite methodological experiments and reflections on the potential and limitations of mapping time in the garden. How can we represent and analyse the temporal dimension of these multi-species world-making projects (Tsing 2015)? How does time (and the lack of it) play a role in our research efforts and outputs?
Submission details
Please submit your abstract of max. 250 words via e-mail to both sofia.cele@kultgeog.uu.se & jan.van.duppen@open.ac.uk AND upload it through the conference website via this link by 15 March 2020. Please make sure to select the correct session number “Session 62: The Sensing and Shaping of Time in Urban Gardens: Affect, Design, Governance, and Labour” when uploading your abstract.
References
Ginn, F., 2017. Domestic Wild: Memory, Nature and Gardening in Suburbia. Oxon: Routledge.
Haraway, D.J., 2008. When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Lefebvre, H., 2004. Rhythmanalysis: space, time, and everyday life. London: Continuum.
Odell, J., 2019. How to do nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Brooklyn and London: Melville House.
Rosol, M., 2012. Community volunteering as neoliberal strategy? Green space production in Berlin. Antipode, 44 (1), 239–257.
Schoneboom, A. and May, J., 2013. Working through the allotment*. ephemera: theory & politics in organization, 13 (1), 137–150.
Tsing, A.L., 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World - On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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