** Special Session at the Canadian Association of Geographers' Annual General
Meeting, August 11-15, 2013, St. John's, Newfoundland **
CFP: Critical geographies of the Canadian North
Session organizers: Emilie Cameron, Carleton University, and Julia Christensen,
University of British Columbia Session co-sponsors: Indigenous Peoples Working
Group, Canadian Women and Geography Study Group
Over the past several years, social science and humanities research in the
Canadian North has expanded rapidly, including geographic research. Although
critical geographic approaches have much to offer the study of social, cultural,
political, economic, and environmental change in the region, explicitly
"critical" geographic approaches have been less dominant than other approaches
(although there have been some important contributions). This absence is
puzzling, given that critical geographic approaches have made significant
contributions to areas of inquiry that relate directly to the northern context,
such as studies of colonial and decolonizing formations, processes of
racialization, uneven development, resource extraction, issues of government and
governance, Indigenous geographies, and studies of power-knowledge, among others.
Questions we seek to examine in this session include: what is the place of
"critical geography" in contemporary northern research? How might some of the
hallmarks of critical geography - engagement with political-economic, feminist,
postcolonial, anti-racist, and other theories; oppositional and critical
engagement with dominant formations; challenging the politics of knowledge
production, emphasizing the colonial present, advancing critical methodologies,
etc - help us understand past and present northern geographies? How might
critical geography itself be transformed by engagement with northern peoples,
places, and concerns? How does critical scholarship intersect with demands from
northerners that research be engaged, policy-relevant, and inclusive, that it
attend to their most pressing concerns, and that northerners maintain ownership
and control over their knowledges? Finally, how might these community engagements
both necessitate and inform critical methodologies?
For this session, we seek papers that employ critical geographic approaches in an
effort to understand past and present northern geographies. We welcome papers
that examine topics of particular relevance to the Canadian North (including the
provincial norths) such as housing, migration, climate change, Indigenous selfdetermination, rapid socio-cultural change, resource development, health, food
security, sovereignty, and others. We also welcome papers that seek to advance
theoretical and methodological approaches in critical northern geography, and/or
that take on the construction of the North as a region.
Inquiries are welcome. Please submit abstracts (no more than 200 words) to
julia.christensen@geog.ubc.ca<mailto:julia.christensen@geog.ubc.ca> by Friday,
March 1st, 2013.