2024 RSA Annual Conference Special Sessions

Session Organisers:
Julie Ratcliffe, Flinders University, Australia
Tom Barnes, Australian Catholic University, Australia
Sally Weller, University of South Australia, Australia
David Bailey, University of Birmingham, UK
Markku Sotarauta, Tampere University, Finland
Andrew Beer, University of South Australia, Australia

Session Details
Across developed and developing economies, industries continue to be confronted by major change, including the rise of artificial intelligence, digital disruption and new technologies, the impacts of climate change, pandemics and public health emergencies, the resetting of cross-national relationships, and shifting consumer preferences in the face of demographic change and other social shifts. Industrial transformation can exert profoundly negative impacts on individual workers, communities, and entire regions. Increasingly, attention has focussed on the essential characteristics of a ‘just transition’ and how best to deliver this in policy and practice.
Globally entire industries appear to be at risk in the face of efforts to deal with climate change, including fossil fuel industries –coal, gas and oil – as well as some forms of manufacturing and primary industries. At the same time, other economic opportunities will emerge as key employers take up those made redundant but the transition of workforce from ‘old’ to ‘new’ may be complex and burdened by significant frictions if appropriate actions are not implemented. The need for new knowledge in this domain is profound.

This set of open special sessions seeks to explore economic change and its consequences in all its dimensions, including;

• Impacts on the workforce;
• Policy making, policy setting and the delivery of support to those affected by change;
• Global trends, including movements towards a well-being economy and away from the maximisation of gross domestic product at any cost, including implications for national and regional labour markets;
• Community well-being and resilience;
• The role of knowledge sharing across regional and national boundaries;
• Impacts on health and well-being;
• Place and organisational leadership in the face of disruptive change;
• Impacts on housing markets;
• The rise of new industries and employment opportunities;
• Training, education and generational chan
  

Session Organisers:
Ricardo Reboredo, Metropolitan University Prague, Czechia
Elisa Gambino, University of Manchester, UK

The study of China’s engagements with countries across the Global South has grown exponentially as a field of inquiry in recent years. Beginning largely as a response to China’s politico-economic internationalization in the context of the Go Out and Belt and Road Initiatives, the field has expanded to include research on large-scale infrastructures and their political/economic/social effects; increasing trade volumes and their significance for global production; the discourses/knowledges that accompany said engagement, and more recently, ongoing transformations in the wake of theCOVID-19 pandemic.

This special session draws inspiration from Doreen Massey’s groundbreaking spatial theories and aims to contribute to the field by re-centering place across these diverse contexts and engagements. We view Massey’s conceptualization of place – as unbounded, dynamic, and shaped by complex relations – as providing both a fresh lens through which to examine the multifaceted nature of China-Global South relations and a platform for transdisciplinary collaboration.

In embracing Massey’s perspectives, we aim to create new understandings that foreground the way multi-scalar connections(economic, social, political, cultural) between China and the countries of the Global South, are both shaping and being shaped by particularly and place. This session therefore invites contributions exploring possibilities and continuities, lineagesand intentionalities, as well as conjunctions and ruptures characterizing China-Global South engagements. We likewise welcome contributions that employ innovative methodologies, or engage with the field in relational manner, conceptualizing places as constituted by distinct lines of connection both to each other and the broader world.