Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers
London, 1st-3rd September 2010
www.rgs.org/AC2010
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'Places without a place': The geographies of ships

Convened by William Hasty (University of Glasgow) and Kimberley Peters (Royal Holloway University of London)

Sponsored by the Historical Geography Research Group and the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group

Discussant: Dr. David Lambert (Royal Holloway University of London)

"...the ship is a piece of floating space, a placeless place, that lives by its own devices, that is self-enclosed and, at the same time, delivered over to the boundless expanse of the ocean, and that goes from port to port, from watch to watch, from brothel to brothel, all the way to the colonies in search of the most precious treasures that lie in wait in their gardens, you see why for our civilisation, from the sixteenth century up to our time, the ship has been at the same time not only the greatest instrument of economic development…but the greatest reservoir of imagination." (Foucault 1998)

Despite being the “most ancient and most modern of spaces” (Casarino 2002), the ship has received surprisingly little attention from geographers. The work of some historians and social theorists, particularly Dening (1992), Gilroy (1993) and Rediker (2004; 2007), and the recent ‘maritime shift’ in historical, social and cultural geography has highlighted the potential for ‘geographies of the ship’. Lambert, Martins and Ogborn (2006) insist that “Other ships are other spaces. Pirate ships, slave vessels, canoes, rafts, ocean liners, tramp steamers, destroyers and submarines are all open to the investigation of the making of social and cultural differences.” In addition, the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ (Sheller and Urry 2006), which has traditionally paid most attention to the plane, train and automobile, has lately begun to examine the possibilities which may be unearthed through geographies of the ship (see Cresswell 2006, Stanley 2008).

This session aims to explore the geographies of ships, providing a platform for critical engagement with ongoing debates and a forum for presenting new perspectives on matters empirical, theoretical and methodological, taking a historical or contemporary focus. These papers could address, but need not be limited to, some of the following topics:

• The ship as a place which disrupts notions of place
• The ship as an ‘other’ space
• Ships and the global world
• The social and cultural geographies of life onboard ships
• The mobility of ships
• Practices of power; domination, resistance and ships

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Abstracts (250 words maximum) should be submitted to William Hasty (will.hasty@ges.gla.ac.uk) and Kimberley Peters (k.a.peters@rhul.ac.uk) by February 19th 2010, including the following information: name, affiliation, contact email, and technical requirements (data projector, audio equipment, etc...).