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bohnandviljoen
Mapping the Edible City (2019-20)
Together with anthropologist Dr. Ferne Edwards and geographer Prof. Kevin Morgan, Bohn&Viljoen will be curating and convening a conference panel for the international conference Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future. To be held originally in London in June 2020, the conference moved online due to the Covid-19 pandemic and will now happen in September 2020.

This prestigious conference is co-organised by the British Academy, the British Museum, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Royal Geographical Society and SOAS University of London.
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Three of the many product labels issued to participants as part of the DQE urban regeneration project Urbane Agrikultur in Köln-Ehrenfeld. (image: Bohn&Viljoen and DQE 2011)
Our panel, fully titled Mapping the Edible City: Making visible communities and food spaces in the city, received the highest number of submissions of all panels to this prestigious conference, and, since January 2020, we are in communication with our new panel partners so as to mount a successful presentation this autumn.

We welcomed inputs from anthropologists, geographers and other disciplines engaged with urban space to explore the emergence and possibilities for urban food mapping practices. We were seek papers/contributions that explore the tensions, criticisms and new theoretical and methodological directions that such mapping introduces across disciplines in relation to key themes that include (but are not limited to) identity, space-use conflicts, gender, migration, the senses, ecology, productivity, and home/place-making through food. We welcomed both, academic papers and other contributions including, but not limited to maps, audio, and video.
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Mapping food and its producers in an urban district in the City of Cologne, Germany, as part of the DQE urban regeneration project Urbane Agrikultur in Köln-Ehrenfeld. (image: Bohn&Viljoen and DQE 2011)
Abstract of our call for contributions/papers:
Traditional mapping practices have drastically changed in recent years from having an apolitical, authorative voice. Enabled by new technologies, maps are no longer singular, static or reductive but instead are being transformed to make visible, educate and to empower many, by engaging different perspectives, topics, tempos and mobilities. Traditionally based in geography due to an engagement with space and place, spatial and urban anthropology now also speak to the particularities of place and locality, while a geographical turn welcomes in ‘thick description’ as storytelling and new media to the map. Popular, novel approaches include radical, guerrilla, emotional and critical cartography which enrich current urban design and planning studies with complex and surprising findings. Urban food practices, a topic of increasing interest to all, urban design, anthropology and geography due to increasing urbanisation, environmental concerns, precarity and a desire to reconnect to nature and to one’s food source, are also prolific in uptaking new mapping styles. Using GIS and other forms of artist, participatory and community mapping, amongst others, food mapping provides a rich arena in which to apply mapping as a tool to communicate new ways of understanding urban space, identities, relationships, informal and alternative economies, mobilities, and connections in and across the city. This panel seeks papers and other contributions that explore the tensions, criticisms, and new theoretical and methodological directions that such mapping introduces across disciplines in relation to key themes that include (but are not limited to) identity, space-use conflicts, gender, migration, the senses, ecology, productivity, and home/place-making through food.
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Mapping food and its producers in an urban district in the City of Cologne, Germany, as part of the DQE urban generation project Urbane Agrikultur in Köln-Ehrenfeld. (image: Dirk Melzer 2011)
MAPPING THE EDIBLE CITY

location: London, Great Britain / the world-wide web
dates: 2019 — 2020
main organisers: The Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) / The Royal Geographical Society (RGS), Great Britain
funding support: University of Brighton

B&V team: This is a project by B&V and the University of Brighton. For B&V: Katrin Bohn, André Viljoen

collaborators: Dr. Ferne Edwards (RMIT, Australia) / Prof. Kevin Morgan (Cardiff University, UK)

links:
the conference’s website / project news on our blog Productive Urban Landscapes