This two day conference aims to explore recent theoretical shifts in sociological and cultural geographical thought and their impact on diverse practical problems of contemporary relevance. In the context of the pressing need to understand more sensitively understand the processes, durations, technologies and experiences of social transformation, the so called ‘affective turn’ in the social sciences has challenged some of the more cognitivist biases of traditional frameworks. One major feature of this shift has been the insistence that neither human nor non-human actors can be reduced to rational processes or outcomes. Rather, as problems as diverse as the environment, mobile societies, anti-racism and crime and violence demonstrate, a world composed of beings who sense and move, as well as think, calls on us to broaden the frameworks we use to produce knowledge and inform public policy and practice.

This conference is jointly organized by the Australian National University School of Sociology, the IAG Cultural Geography Study Group, and the New Critical Theory Group (comprising geographers based at UNSW Canberra and the University of Bristol, and sociologists at the Australian National University and the School of Criminology and Sociology at Middlesex University).

The event is sponsored by the Australian National University School of Sociology and the Institute of Australian Geographers.

Enquiries to: david.bissell@anu.edu.au