CFP : AAG 2020 : Carbon and Mobilities: (In)differences Towards Climate Change in Policies and Practices

[Jean-Baptiste FRETIGNY]

** Apologies for cross-postings ***

In an era of climate emergency, mobilities are at the forefront of climatic concerns due to their major and increasing contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. While (un)sustainable mobilities have been investigated by scholars since the 1990’s, high and, more often, (seemingly) low carbon mobilities are increasingly studied (Givoni, Banister 2013; Paterson 2014; Hopkins, Higham 2016). Critical approaches of the literature as well as of dominant policies highlight aporias embedded into technology-driven, socially and ecologically overly optimistic visions of carbon transitions for mobilities (see Shove et al. 2012, Temenos et al. 2017, Anable 2019 for an alternative perspective).

 

In such a context, how can we make sense of carbon as a key dimension of mobilities, involving contrasted representations, practices, (in)decisions and mobilizations regarding its direct and indirect, always relational, consumption? The goal of reducing their global footprint is associated with renewed and varied forms of attention as well as indifference, emotions, tensions and contradictions in everyday individual and collective practices of (im)mobilities, policymaking or academia.

 

This call for papers invites submissions from contributors shedding light on relationships with this both very abstract and very material component of mobile practices and its social, cultural, political, economic and ecological (absence of) framing in specific places and spaces. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

1)      Critical analysis of policies (un)addressing the increasing contribution of mobilities to carbon emissions

2)      Desire, shame and other feelings towards intensive or low carbon mobilities

3)      Imaginations, categories and calculations associated with the carbon footprint of mobilities

4)      Carbon, mobilities and power relationships (gender, class, race, age, etc.)

5)      Everyday representations of carbon in mobile practices

6)      Mobilities and their relationship to carbon through the eye of mobilizations against climate change (Extinction rebellion, Flying less movement, actions for climatic justice in courts, etc.) or with other stance (such as the yellow vests movement)

7)      Geopolitics of carbon policies on mobilities

8)      Carbon and non-carbon-related environmental issues of mobilities: interlocking and disjunctions

9)      Reflexive analysis on academic mobilities

10)   Curtail consumption and avoidance of mobilities

11)   Critical geographies of technological projects for low-carbon mobilities

 

Please send an abstract of not more than 200 words to Jean-Baptiste Frétigny (jean-baptis...@u-cergy.fr) and Lin Weiqiang (weiq...@nus.edu.sg) by 25 October 2019.