RHN 13/2024 | Call
Organisers: Frank Uekötter (Ruhr University Bochum)
14–16 August 2024, Bochum, Germany
Deadline for submissions: 9 February 2024
Call for Papers:
Understanding Monoculture. Challenges – Mindsets – Learning Experiences
The ERC Advanced Grant project "The Making of Monoculture: A Global History" (MaMoGH) invites paper proposals for the conference "Understanding Monoculture. Challenges – Mindsets – Learning Experiences". The conference will take place in Bochum, Germany on August 14-16, 2024.
The modern food system is built on monoculture. Wherever we look in the age of global capitalism, large organic production regimes routinely gravitate towards a single product. The problems for societies, economies, and environments are legion, and numerous scholars have shown that monoculture came at a price. The MaMoGH project aims to take the next step. If monocultures are notorious trouble spots, why are they still with us?
The world of monoculture is about wrestling with a multitude of crises, and there is no guarantee that organic production regimes will survive: more than one has collapsed in the face of biological threats, competitors, or changing demand. The MaMoGH project treats crisis management as the default mode of monocultural production and seeks to understand the tools, interests and mindsets that allowed groups and individuals to persist in the face of terrifying challenges and path dependencies.
The MaMoGH project is interested in scholars working along these lines on monocultures in agriculture or forestry anywhere on this planet. We are particularly interested in contributions on the following issues:
-
Challenges: how did people and institutions respond to threats to the viability of a monoculture? Contributions can focus on technological, economic, environmental, social or political challenges or a combination thereof.
-
Mindsets: working in perennial crisis mode creates tremendous stress for individuals, and we want to learn about mental coping mechanisms. What were the attitudes, interests, and resources that allowed investors, operators, and experts to endure in embattled monocultures?
-
Learning Experiences: did monocultures relate to other products or places in terms of lessons, warnings, precedents, or epistemologies? Can we identify places or processes of individual, collective or institutional learning?
Speakers are encouraged to present works in progress. A draft paper for circulation among participants is expected at least a month before the conference. It will be assumed that participants have read these papers before the event, and presentations should focus on contextualizing comments. We plan to publish a selection of papers after the conference.
The MaMoGH project will provide travel support for participants. The conference is timed to facilitate attendance of the 4th World Congress of Environmental History in Oulu, Finland. For further inquiries, please contact Frank Uekötter at frank.uekoetter@ruhr-uni-bochum.de.
Please send your proposals (max. 500 words) and a brief cv to technikgeschichte@rub.de. The deadline for proposals is February 9, 2024.
Contact Information
Frank Uekotter, Ruhr-University Bochum
PI of the ERC Advanced Grant Project "The Making of Monoculture: A Global History" (MaMoGH)
Contact E-mail: frank.uekoetter@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
URL: https://www.tug.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/tug/forschung/index.html.en