International Conference on Territory and Environment

International conference

Tours (France) 
December 8-9, 2011

Abstract submission deadline: February 28, 2011

The aim of this conference is to produce an overview of research in Western countries over the last forty years on the theme “territory and environment”. It proposes to sum up the transformations that have taken place in the building and implementation of social (and spatial) representations, from the viewpoint of environmental issues. The idea will be to address the question of reciprocal influences, on the one hand of environmental issues on transformations of ‘territorial practices’ and on the other hand of effects on the environment of these spatial practices and their regulation.  In this context, the organisers hope to focus discussion on the results of these transformations in actual practices, governance, decision-making processes and the various modes of intervention of political and technical actors – expert or not – taking part  in the territorialisation of environmental policies and the ecologising of planning practices.

In order to get an idea of the interactions between social representations and public or collective action, discussions will be based on three analytical notions enabling us to question ongoing public action: scales of territorial intervention, social norms underlying representations and practices, and finally, instruments of government action. Many questions can be asked about the evolution of regulations between territorial and environmental practices – for some, a little more greenery and for others, a matter of profound changes. How has the environment suddenly  come to play a role in the various socio-spatial spheres? How have ecological modernisation and “green technology” – by strengthening the technical and scientific dimensions of government action – transformed local management? To what extent has the introduction of environmental issues into planning policies modified decision-making processes? This conference – through case studies on interactions between representations and actions, between discourse and practice and an analysis of their reciprocal influence – wishes to examine the transformation of scales, norms, and the instruments of spatial and environmental policies.
In this context, the conference calls on researchers in the ecological and social sciences (geographers, ecologists, urban planners, developers, historians, economists, law specialists, political scientists, sociologists, ethnologists, etc.). In particular, we are interested in communications in the fields of public policies and actions, regulation concerning the uses of natural resources, processes of collective mobilisation on ecological-territorial issues and on matters of ecological inequalities. Discussions will focus on European territory with the comparative perspective of other Western approaches, North American in particular. 

The organising institution of the conference is the CITERES Laboratory (Cités, Territoires, Environnement et Sociétés (CITERES, UMR 6173) of the CNRS and the Université François Rabelais in Tours (France). The conference is organised in collaboration with l’Institut EDS del’Université Laval, the Groupe d’Études Interdisciplinaires en Géographie et Environnement Régional  of l’Université du Québec à Montréal et le  Centre d’Étude et de Recherche en Sciences Sociales of l’Université de Strasbourg. The scientific committee is composed of Canadian, Dutch, French, Italian, Mexican and Swiss researchers. 

The working languages of the conference are English and French, the call for proposals is bilingual; simultaneous translation will be provided during the conference. 

http://www.aesop-planning.com/Congress_files/2011_Tours_France.pdf