Organizers: Nicholas Lynch (University of Oxford) and Kersty Hobson (Cardiff University)

Increasing resource scarcity coupled with prevailing global production-consumption patterns has of late focused attention on ideas of the ‘circular economy’: a discourse that signals the need to re-calibrate fundamental socio-material relations across time and place. Whilst many countries and regions may not have overtly embraced the label of the Circular Economy, it echoes a wide array of moves that aim to (re)capture / recycle the (economic and social) value of goods through diverse feedback loops. Policy discourses and interventions of circularity, in Europe at least, have to date focussed on technological innovations and win-win economic growth scenarios. Much less attention has been given to the socio-spatial implications and limitations of ‘thinking in circles’, including issues of scale, geographies and social affects.

This session invites contributions that explore themes related to ideas of recalibrated material flows and their socio-political and geographical implications. This can include papers that examine:

1. The changing ‘social lives’ of specific resources and materials;

2. Localized forms of socio-material regeneration and/or re-use (e.g. Repair Clubs, informal recycling centres);

3. The practices and outcomes of the ‘sharing economy’;

4. Policies, interventions, and discourses of socio-material reconstitution and circularity

5. The place of ‘dead ends’ e.g. the limitations of circularity, including methods for evaluating where and when ‘value’ can be extracted and recaptured.

Please submit a title and abstract (<200 words) to Nicholas Lynch (nicholas.lynch@ouce.ox.ac.uk) by March 11th, 2016.