Vegetal Studies

From: <adrian@adrianfreed.com>

Date: March 10, 2011 5:14:01 PM EST

To: "Sha Wei" <shaxinwei@gmail.com>

Cc: "p.a.duquette " <impetus@graffiti.net>

Subject: paper call for Gardening and Nesting groups

Whoops:
I meant Plant/Ecology  +  Memory/Place
groups of course:

Temporal Environments: Rethinking Time and Ecology
Deadline: April 01 2011
Updated: January 16 2011
Special Issue of the Journal of Environmental Philosophy Editors:
Jacob Metcalf (UC Santa Cruz) and Thom van Dooren (University of
Technology, Sydney)

Place and space have received substantial attention in environmental
philosophy in recent decades. Theorists from a variety of fields have
proposed that reorienting our relationship to the non-human world
requires reconsideration of ways of understanding and inhabiting
spaces and places. Ecophenomenologists have argued that replacing
meaningful places with abstract space was a critical moment in
histories of environmental destruction, and environmental ethics will
require re-imagining place as meaningful again. Bioregionalism has
emphasized the need to rethink our places as ecological relationships,
and inspired not only changes in academia, but also in environmental
movements such as food localism. In a related vein, Val Plumwood has
cautioned against too simplistic a notion of “one’s place”,
critiquing
the fracturing of place in which cherished homeplaces are able to be
preserved only as a result of the destruction of less visible ‘shadow
places’. In short, there is a broad assertion that reassessing our
obligations to more-than-human worlds requires understanding place as
more meaningful than an empty space to be filled by human concerns.

This special issue of the Journal of Environmental Philosophy will
present a collection of articles that direct similar attention to the
time and temporality of environments, a topic that has been relatively
neglected by environmental philosophy and ethics. Although
environmental ethicists have long discussed temporal issues, such as
intergenerational justice, time has often been treated as an
essentially linear and static container for human action. But if we
conceive of time as produced, constructed, maintained, lived,
multiple, and a more-than-human concern, the possibilities for
environmental philosophy look dramatically different. This collection
will offer such a framework for thinking through time and environment
by exploring the multiple lived times present in global climate
change, species extinction, the practices of ecological sciences, and
the temporal fidelities of conservation and restoration.

Among the questions we hope this collection might explore are: What
philosophical reconsiderations of time might be available and useful
for other ecological disciplines? How does the pace of human life—
markets, science, desires, consumption—impact our ability to imagine
and produce livable futures? How might we remember different, and
sometimes lost, ways of valuing human and nonhuman worlds in a way
that does not fetishize the past but still holds it open as a resource
for constructing better futures? How does an attentiveness to the
scope of evolutionary time alter our sense of obligation in a time of
massive biodiversity loss? How does the high-speed pace of much human
life actually make it harder to change the conditions of those lives?
How do humans and other animals learn to justly co-inhabit our
sometimes very different temporalities? What ways of life are enabled
or disabled by different temporal metaphors? What post-colonial
temporalities are necessary for recuperation of cultural ecologies
damaged by genocides and ecocides? Will sustainable ecologies require
new models of temporality to reformulate growth, degrowth, and
regrowth?

We invite submissions from environmental philosophers and other
ecological scholars, including reflective pieces from natural and
social scientists. Pieces that are grounded in specific cases of
temporal environments are especially encouraged. We welcome pieces
from international and native communities, and others not often
represented in philosophy `journals.

The Journal of Environmental Philosophy (http://
ephilosophy.uoregon.edu/) is a peer-reviewed professional philosophy
journal, and is the official journal of the International Association
of Environmental Philosophy (IAEP). The Journal of Environmental
Philosophy publishes innovative research relevant to all areas of
environmental philosophy, including ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics,
theology, politics, ecofeminism, environmental justice, philosophy of
technology, and ecophenomenology. Target publication date: Spring 2012
Abstracts of 300-400 words, due by April 1, 2011 Papers due for review
by August 1, 2011 There are no word count restrictions, but
submissions are encouraged to aim for 6-8,000 words. For further
information or to submit abstracts, please contact Jacob Metcalf
(jake.metcalf@gmail.com) or Thom van Dooren
(thom.van.dooren@gmail.com).