Call For Papers: Human Plant Geographies
Conference: Association for American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting,
New York, February 24-28th 2012
Convenors: Kathleen Buckingham (University of Oxford) and Catherine Phillips (University of
Wollongong)
Chair: Jenny Atchison (University of Wollongong)
Discussants: Lesley Head (University of Wollongong) and Maan Barua (University of Oxford)
Human-plant relations have received limited attention in social studies and biogeographic work.
This neglect is puzzling since human-plant relations are central to many sustainability debates
(biodiversity protection, food security and production, natural resource management, ethical
consumption, carbon sequestration, greening housing, invasive species control, etc.).
Understanding the diversity of human-plant relationships requires active engagement from within
the natural and social sciences. This session is intended to explore human-plant geographies in
ways that do not always place humans at the centre. This session is inspired by ongoing debates
among an international group of scholars, begun at the Institute of Australian Geographers
Conference in Wollongong in July 2011. We aim to extend and elaborate conversations with
others. We invite papers that approach human-plant relations from diverse disciplinary,
theoretical, and methodological positions. Themes may include, but are not limited to:
- Plants and people as co-producers of spaces and places;
- Plant agency, reassessing the assumed object/passive status of plants;
- Human-plant relations at different scales of space and time;
- Methods for understanding human-plant relations ;
- Issues of boundary-making and challenge, examining the practices and politics of human-
- plant belonging; and,
- Possibilities and practicalities of ethico-political relations among people and plants.
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