Dynamics of Economic Spaces Commission Meeting

Palmerston North, New Zealand

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

Theme: New Resource Geographies

Timing: 22-24 November 2016

Venue: Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Key Dates

  • 1 July – Registration Opens
  • 1 August – 2nd call for papers and abstracts
  • 1 September – Early Bird Registrations close
  • 31 October – Registration closes for speakers – late registration option for attendees
  • 22-24 – November Conference

For details and other information contact

Professor Michael Roche
School of People Environment and Planning
Massey University
Palmerston North
New Zealand
m.m.roche@massey.ac.nz

Please send your Paper Titles and Abstracts to m.m.roche@massey.ac.nz:

Title
Author(s) and affiliation
Email address
Abstract – 200 words max please

More information:

The last commission meeting to be held in New Zealand was in Auckland in 2006 prior to the IGU Regional Conference in Brisbane. For a number of reasons it is timely for the Commission to hold a further New Zealand meeting. Some observers have commented that ‘there are now two New Zealands – Auckland and the rest’. This meeting by being based in the provincial city of Palmerston North, home of Massey University, originally established as an agricultural college, thus lends itself especially well to the conference theme of ‘New Resource Geographies’. New Zealand is many respects still an export specialized economy and in mid 2016 the dairy boom that has sustained the export sector for some years has faltered rather severely. The commission meeting is thus likely to coincide with some serious national policy discussion around the future trajectory of the dairy industry (milk power – a late 19thcentury product – or more value added), the long called for and fraught rationalisation of meat industry processing, and the future place of an array of non-traditional primary exports (e.g. Manuka honey) along with the risk of a new dependency on the Chinese market. All of this takes place in a context where New Zealand is one of the longer running neo-liberal experiments dating back to the mid-1980s. The meeting will also provide the opportunity for a debriefing on the Biological Economies project, an externally funded venture that has probed new sources of rural value and experimentation in New Zealand (see special issue of the New Zealand Geographer vol. 69 (3) 2013), an introduction to the ‘More Markets project and a foreshadowing of the ‘Blue Economy’ part of the Sustainable Seas Challenge part of the national sciences challenge. This latter element will springboard quite usefully to the Commission’s Coastal Transitions meeting in New Haven CT in 2017.

Potential fieldtrips associated with the meeting would include a visit to Hawkes Bay a horticultural and viticultural region and more locally, the opportunity to visit Fonterra and the FoodHQ hub based at and adjacent to the university campus.

Presentations on food and fibre, farming, fisheries, viticulture, and forestry are particularly welcomed as will other research work that positions food and fibre in a globalisation and or governance framework. Papers that in other ways contribute to the commission’s research trajectory are also most welcome.