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Dear all,</div>
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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. </div>
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<b>Final Call for Contributions - Queer(ing) Agriculture and Ruralities</b></div>
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<span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
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<span style="color: black;">30th European Society for Rural Sociology Congress, 7–11 July 2025, Rîga, Latvia
</span><span style="color: blue;"><u><a href="https://esrs2025.rsu.lv/" id="OWA27215227-815e-0f9c-b37b-9f1157261f47" class="x_x_x_OWAAutoLink" originalsrc="https://esrs2025.rsu.lv/" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="color: blue; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">https://esrs2025.rsu.lv/</a></u></span></p>
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<span style="color: black;">Session organizers: Henk van Milligen, Clara Lina Bader, Laura Esche (Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen University), Prisca Pfammatter (Geography Institute, University of Bern)</span></p>
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<span style="font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">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.</span></p>
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<span style="color: black;">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.</span></p>
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<span style="color: black;">Submissions can include, but are not limited to, the following issues:</span></p>
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<div style="direction: ltr;">Importance of Sexuality and Gender in Rural (Agricultural) Practices </div>
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<div style="direction: ltr;">Beyond Binary Ontologies</div>
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<div style="direction: ltr;">Exploring Liveable Futures: Queer Utopias </div>
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<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The objectives of the session:</span></p>
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<div style="direction: ltr;">On The Ground: Gain insights into queer, rural agricultural practices; </div>
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<div style="direction: ltr;">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; </div>
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<div style="direction: ltr;">Futuring: Visibilise existing alternatives. Expanding and queering the imagination of the possible. </div>
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<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>We encourage contributions from master students as well as non-academic submissions</b>. Informal qu</span><span style="color: black;">eries can be addressed to
</span><span style="color: blue;"><u><a href="mailto:laura.esche@wur.nl" id="OWAa4538b21-a7a1-7b5d-0f32-7bea7cc07e0a" class="x_x_x_OWAAutoLink" style="color: blue; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">laura.esche@wur.nl</a></u></span><span style="color: black;"> and
</span><span style="color: blue;"><u><a href="mailto:prisca.pfammatter@unibe.ch" id="OWAab6f6d9e-921a-7325-0389-3adceb753953" class="x_x_x_OWAAutoLink" style="color: blue; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">prisca.pfammatter@unibe.ch</a></u></span><span style="color: black;">.
Abstract submission (max 250 words) through the conference website by 28th February 2025. </span></p>
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