Call for papers - poppy symposium at the Association of American Geographers annual meeting 2010

The annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers will be held 14-18 April 2010 in Washington, DC. Some 5000 people from around the world are expected to attend. Jane Goodall will be the featured guest.

The meeting will consist of a special extended programme on opium poppy, with the help of the Rural Geography, GIS, and Spatial Analysis and Modeling specialty groups. The program will follow five general themes:

• Poppy and geotechnologies (GIS, remote sensing, crop prediction).
• Poppy and conflict (Afghanistan, Asia, the Americas, funding for terrorism and insurgency, security and poppy cultivation.
• Poppy, farming systems and rural livelihoods (legal, illegal, drug, food, industrial crop).
• Poppy and business (industry, agribusiness, illegal drugs, the 19 legal poppy-growing countries, the dozen or so countries where illegal poppy is found ).
• Poppy and culture (kitchen, garden, art, perfume).

There are many fascinating possibilities to explore within those heneral themes, and the AAG seeks to include papers, posters and films that examine poppy "The good evil" and the ways that poppy is intertwined in our lives and the lives of countless rural people of the world.

So far, there will be a session on poppy in history, on poppy and environmental water resources, and on remote sensing of poppy, with guest speaker Richard Brittan of ALCIS who tracks poppy in Afghanistan for the British and US governments. The AAG is also hoping for guest speakers from the Counter-Intelligence community. Allisson Brown's paper will talk about the effects a drug context adds to the difficulties of on-the-ground rural development work.

Papers with an applied spatial analysis content will be considered for publication in International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research (IJAGR). If enough papers are received, a special edition of IJAGR will be possible.

The deadline for abstract submission is 28 October 2009. Even if you have already submitted one paper for AAG, or will not have time to prepare a full paper, your participation in panel discussions is welcome.

Please contact Allison Brown: opiumpoppyAAG2010@gmail.com, for more information and to coordinate with other presenters.