Call for Papers: Inaugural issue of Agoriad: A journal of spatial theory
The editorial team of Agoriad (meaning Openings in Welsh) are looking for submissions for its inaugural issue on the theme of Indigenous ontologies (see full CFP below). We are particularly interested in soliciting submissions from Indigenous scholars as well as from postgraduates, early career researchers and established researchers.
Agoriad is a new online open-access journal that is managed and edited by postgraduates and early career researchers with oversight and support from a managing editorial team. Its aim is to publish high-quality research on key theoretical debates as well as provide a supportive publishing process for researchers at all levels. The journal is supported by the ESRC Wales (Cymru) Doctoral Training Partnership and published by Cardiff University Press (Gwasg Prifysgol Caerdydd).
Agoriad will be published annually and is organised around a specific theoretical topic or theme, usually linked to the Gregynog Theory School (GTS), an annual postgraduate conference hosted by the ESRC Wales (Cymru) DTP Human Geography pathway. This year the journal will feature an article from (and interview with) the Keynote Speaker, Professor Jenny Pickerill, from the University of Sheffield.
We hope to publish a variety of formats within Agoriad, this includes the traditional academic papers and book reviews, but please also get in touch if you have other formats you would like us to consider: photo essays, poetry, visual art, audio.
Please see below for CFP. If you have any queries about your project, feel free to reach out to the editorial team Agoriad@cardiff.ac.uk, we are happy to receive abstracts and enquires at this time and want to provide a supportive pathway to facilitate authors from submission to publication.
Submission deadline: January 15th 2024
Submission details: TBC
Agoriad: A Journal of Spatial Practice – Webinar.
Call for Papers
‘Indigenous Ontologies’
Couldn’t one shift to a perspective showing that the source of the most interesting concepts, problems, entities and agents introduced into thought…is in the imaginative power of the societies – or, better, the peoples and collectives – that [we] propose to explain?
Viveiros de Castro, Cannibal Metaphysics
In a period where geographic scholarship is reflecting on its colonial legacy, and attempting to decolonise its worldviews and mindsets, many scholars have turned to indigenous ontologies as a potential alternative to the dominance of scholarship rooted in European perspectives. Yet such an approach raises a number of thorny questions. While the anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro tells us that there is much to be learned from indigenous thought, he is also reticent to ascribe certain modes of thinking as belonging to others in an endogenous and essentialist manner. Such a caution would seem to raise questions about our key terms. Indigeneity always bears the trace of primordialism and ontology similarly suggests something ‘essential’. Thus, how are we to acknowledge the radically different thinking of others – and its potential to open our presumptions, concepts, and modes of knowledge production – without falling into these traps? How do we recognise certain ontologies as ‘alternative’ (and even emancipatory) without naming those ontologies and (in the process) identifying them as ‘theirs’ and not ‘ours’? Are we not in danger of (yet again) ascribing certain characteristics to those that are different and of reserving other characteristics for ourselves and those who are like us? And if so, how to avoid this being yet another form of colonial appropriation? The aim of this issue of Agoriad is to explore the conceptual potential and problems that emerge when engaging with indigenous thought. We welcome submissions from Geography and cognate disciplines that explore how the ideas, concepts, and world understandings of others open up complex conversations about difference and deepens (rather than escapes) the problem of what it means to decolonise thought in the twenty-first century.