[Rundmail] WG: ESRS 2025 - Queer(ing) Agriculture and Ruralities - Call for Contributions

[prisca.pfammatter at unibe.ch]

Dear all,

We would like to quickly remind you to submit your abstract to our session on queer(ing) agriculture and ruralities at the ESRS congress in Riga this July.

Final Call for Contributions -  Queer(ing) Agriculture and Ruralities



30th European Society for Rural Sociology Congress, 7–11 July 2025, Rīga, Latvia https://esrs2025.rsu.lv/



Session organizers: Henk van Milligen, Clara Lina Bader, Laura Esche (Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen University), Prisca Pfammatter (Geography Institute, University of Bern)



Ensuring livable rural lives for all means taking seriously and placing centrally the lived experiences marginalized by i.e., cisheteropatriarchal constructions of “the rural”. Doing so allows for a more complex - and accurate - view of rural areas as neither conservative and traditional nor as an escape from social norms and institutional oppression. Rather, one that can bring to light the tensions underlying these assumptions and how queer rural (farming) identities persist and thrive despite, and because of, what everyday livable rural and agricultural lives look like.

The proposed WG engages with queer (farming) ruralities to contribute to an understanding of livable rural lives and futures in all their diversities.  More than that, in and through the working group we strive towards queering different binaries (rural/urban, masculine/feminine, straight/queer, nature/culture, private/public) and exploring the opportunities that thinking about and with “the rural” through queer lenses can contribute to liveable futures.

Submissions can include, but are not limited to, the following issues:

  *
Importance of Sexuality and Gender in Rural (Agricultural) Practices
  *
Beyond Binary Ontologies
  *
Exploring Liveable Futures: Queer Utopias


The objectives of the session:

  *
On The Ground:  Gain insights into queer, rural agricultural practices;
  *
Institutional: Spark new (necessary) debates surrounding the harm of binary institutional systems. Incentivise organisations to  look at ecological but also social and political diversity. Understand governance of queer lives in rural areas;
  *
Futuring: Visibilise existing alternatives. Expanding and queering the imagination of the possible.

We encourage contributions from master students as well as non-academic submissions. Informal queries can be addressed to laura.esche at wur.nl<mailto:laura.esche at wur.nl> and prisca.pfammatter at unibe.ch<mailto:prisca.pfammatter at unibe.ch>. Abstract submission (max 250 words)  through the conference website by 28th February 2025.









-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ak-feministische-geographien.org/pipermail/rundmail/attachments/20250219/413cb9c6/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: ESRS 2025 Call for Papers.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 208280 bytes
Desc: ESRS 2025 Call for Papers.pdf
URL: <http://lists.ak-feministische-geographien.org/pipermail/rundmail/attachments/20250219/413cb9c6/attachment-0001.pdf>