Link to Session Platform

Chairs(s):

Kai Bosworth, Virginia Commonwealth University

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Description:

How are voluminous spaces socially mediated, constructed, or experienced? What socio-cultural relations emerge, contest, or create conditions of expansiveness, interiority, containment, or depth? The last decade has seen a proliferation of geographical inquiries into vertical terrains and territories (Billé 2020; Braun 2000; Elden 2013; Marston 2019; Melo Zurita and Munro 2019), volumetric and voluminous phenomena in subterranean (Himley and Marston 2019; Squire and Dodds 2019; Woon and Dodds 2021), aerial (Adey, Whitehead, and Williams 2013), or aqueous domains (Sammler 2020; Steinberg and Peters 2015), and even thoughtful methodological considerations that such approaches require (Jackman and Squire 2021). As an opportunity to take stock of this now voluminous scholarship with impacts beyond geography (Billé 2018; Hardenberg and Mahony 2020), we consider pathways not yet taken, or angles less studied, by contemporary geographers. Many examinations of vertical or voluminous spatialities have tended at times to overlook or diminish the rich social and culturally diverse worlds that populate, create, and make meaning of these “voluminous” spaces or phenomena, not just because of their rich and complex materialities and liveliness materially but also their imaginative force across space and time (Eshleman 2003; Hawkins 2020a; 2020b; Pike 2007). These may include—but frequently exceed—institutions associated with states and geopolitics, science and technology, and firms and extractive capital. Voluminous spaces are also productive of social and cultural meaning, to the point that a given space may not fit in the categories—vertical, geological, material—otherwise framed as neutral or universal. How does our understanding of voluminous spaces shift if we orient our attention to the social worlds that make/take these spaces as meaningful?



In an insightful response to Stuart Elden’s oft-cited “Secure the Volume,” Peter Adey concludes by asking us to consider “how these volumes are lived-in or not, what they feel like and how they might be reclaimed or made anew, and how ultimately other social and cultural registers might tell other sorts of stories” (Adey 2013, 54). Taking Adey’s call as inspiration, this session seeks to reflect upon, and intervene in, the assumptions and absences characterizing contemporary thinking about volumes. We invite creative papers which widen and play with the conceptual and methodological boundaries of “voluminous” spaces or phenomena by engaging them through the lens of sociality and relations/relatedness, however understood. Attention to culturally and historically contingent qualities of relations and their voluminous dimensions are especially welcome. Our aim is to have a broad enough frame to allow for linkages across currently disparate domains, such as considerations of voluminous spaces in sites of ritual and other cultural practices, political activism and contestation, quotidian and intimate everyday life, aesthetic reflection and creative production. From these perspectives, we expect a broadening and even challenge to our current repertoire of volumetric/voluminous spaces and phenomena: yes, caves, bunkers, mines, burrows, oceans, and tunnels, but also closets and attics, algae vats, burial sites, volumes of/as text or sound, and even children’s forts where life worlds and imaginaries thrive. We welcome interdisciplinary scholarship that pushes the boundaries of cross-cultural and even intergenerational voluminous thinking and experiences through shared conversations with anthropology, archeology, architecture, cultural studies, and more.

Non-Presenting Participants Agenda