People in CARLU

1) Agriculture and Rural Land Use in the West and Great Plains

Organizer: Lisa Harrington (lbutlerh@k-state.edu)

Please contact Lisa if you are interested in participating in this session.

2) Contemporary Rural Issues in the US and Beyond

                   John Cromartie, Alex Vias, and Pete Nelson invite members of the

Population Specialty Group, the Rural Geography Specialty Group,

and others to participate in sessions next Spring in Denver addressing

current rural issues.  We want to bring together a broad range of

topics-demographic, economic, cultural-into meaningful groupings

of 3-4 sessions.  We welcome both theoretical and applied perspectives

and hope for a variety of scales from the individual to the globe.  We

anticipate a major focus on U.S. conditions and trends but  would greatly

appreciate any submissions that broaden the coverage.

             If you're interested, please (1) contact one of us with a short

description of your paper; also, let us know of others who may be interested;

and (2) submit your abstract online and send us your PIN.  We would like a

couple of days to formulate the sessions (and possibly add discussants),

so we need to have all PINs by October 15.

John Cromartie, jbc@ers.usda.gov

Alex Vias, alexander.vias@uconn.edu

Pete Nelson, pbnelson@middlebury.edu

3) Conservation and private lands in the New West

Organizer: Eric Compas, UW-Madison

Chair: Paul Robbins, UA-Tucson

             While the broad outlines of contemporary transformations of the American

West are known, the details of how recent demographic and economic

shifts are shaping the politics surrounding the use of natural resources

are unclear. This session explores how these changes are reflected in

natural resource use and politics on private lands. Our studies of the

region will examine various themes, theories, and intersections of

environmental politics, political ecology, land-use change, and rural

geography.

Contact: edcompas@wisc.edu

4) Political Economy of Organic Food Supply Chains

Organizers:

    Amy Trauger (email: akt122@psu.edu)

    Andrew Murphy (email: a.murphy@bham.ac.uk)

    Markus Hassler (email: markus.hassler@ruhr-uni-bochum.de)

The new agricultural paradigm of post-productivism places an emphasis on

"local" production and consumption of organic foods, but the increasing

global demand for organic food and the changing regulatory environments

within the nation-state have had the effect of extending the reach of

organic food supply chains. This session proposes to explore the historical

context and contemporary changes in organic food production at a variety of

scales and through a diversity of lenses.

Suggested topics might include, but are not limited to: theorizing "scale"

as it relates to organic production, distribution and consumption; the

"local" impact of spatially extended supply chains; the relationships

between new regulatory environments and global organic supply chains;

discourses, ideology and material practices around sustainability and

organic production; discussions of marketing strategies employed by organic

producers including wholesale, retailing, and/or cooperatives; and/or the

proliferation of "risk" through spatially extended supply chains. We

particularly encourage papers that use empirical material to address

theoretical debates within postcolonialism, feminism, actor-network theory,

critical realism, marxist theory, or deconstructivism.

Expressions of interest should be submitted as soon as possible to either of

the organizers. Final abstracts of no more than 250 words will be required by

the session organizers by October 10th 2004 and should be sent to Amy Trauger

Abstract instructions:

http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/call_for_papers/abstract_Instructions.Htm

Amy Trauger

Department of Geography

302 Walker Building

Penn State University

University Park, PA 16802

FAX: 814-863-7943

email: akt122@psu.edu

5) NEOLIBERALISM AND THE AGRO-FOOD SECTOR

Organizer: Jamey Essex, Syracuse University

With the recent movement of agricultural and food policy to the center of international

dialogue and disputes over trade liberalization, more attention is being paid to how

neoliberal strategies of free trade, marketization, privatization, and state retrenchment

are reshaping networks of agro-food production and consumption.  These processes,

occurring at scales from the body to the global, have profound implications for issues

such as food security, rural development, and social reproduction.  Geographers have

contributed a great deal to studies of agrarian change and agro-industrialization, but

often without directly emphasizing how neoliberalism - as both ideology and strategy –

has been advanced and/or resisted in the agro-food sector.  This session invites papers

examining the changing geographies of agro-food under conditions of neoliberalism,

including theoretical treatments of neoliberalism, scale, and agro-food geographies,

as well as case studies of specific policies, institutions, or places.

Please contact Jamey Essex at jsessex@maxwell.syr.edu if interested in contributing to this session.