Conference Agenda

With the practice turn, the geographical discipline is experiencing a (re)focus on socially established routine actions. Daily human activities, as well as the interconnected, persistent material artifacts, are central from this theoretical viewpoint to understanding societies. Simultaneously, the world, particularly Europe, is undergoing a set of dynamic changes, like the anthropogenic alterations of the geo-ecological sphere or the ongoing political shift towards the right, as this year’s EU elections have made strikingly clear.

Against this background of a seeming contradiction between rapidly changing environments and the realignment towards established, seemingly static practices through practice theory, we want to raise the following central question for this session:

How can we examine change with practice theory?

Do we conceptualize change as something intrinsic to the components of practice or external forces acting on practices? How can practices change in the sense of leverage points for a socio-ecological transformation?

This session's spatial focus is on European rural areas, which are often labeled as 'lagging' spaces of continuity while simultaneously undergoing rapid changes, such as agricultural restructuring or recent reappropriation by urban dwellers. We invite contributions that engage with the relationship between (socio-ecological) transformation and practice theory from both theoretical-conceptual and empirical perspectives, particularly those addressing change in rural areas.

We furthermore invite contributions reflecting on the potential of practice theory for changing the geographic discipline, e.g. through the consideration of tacit and embodied knowledge, aspects which have been lacking attention in geographic research so far.