Geographical fieldwork has recently become a topic studied in itself: a 1994 focus in The Professional Geographer has initiated this self-reflective movement within the discipline. Indeed, fieldwork has long remained a blind spot in the geographical undertaking, as it was either left ignored or self-evident. Critical examinations currently excavate its diverse meanings. Throughout the history of geography, fieldwork has acted as the main provider for the production of geographical knowledge: it has supplied data, scientific legitimacy and institutional authority. In consequence, fieldwork is a strong component of a geographer's identity.

The conference Mapping Practices: Doing fieldwork in Geography invites geographers and other social scientists to further investigate this spectrum of significations by considering the four following dimensions of fieldwork: it can refer

• to the specific place where the geographer conducts his/her investigations and to the spatiality that comes along as a dimension of his/her practices,
• to the procedures s/he applies to this investigation,
• to the significations that emerge from the geographer's practices,
• to the scientific objects s/he consequently constructs.

The conference thus aims at contributing to our theoretical insight of fieldwork, especially by focusing on both the geographer as subject and the spatial dimensions of fieldwork.

Paper proposals are invited on any aspect of a critical and theoretical understanding of fieldwork in geography, but particularly those addressing the following themes:

• Fieldwork as a geographical object: spatial arrangements, measures and scales of the field; relations between field, field-work and field-working; relations between the spatial dimension of fieldwork and the production of scientific knowledge.
• Geographer(s) in the field: the geographer in the field as both body and subject; motivations and choice of a field; sociology of geographers practising fieldwork; material conditions of the production of knowledge; uses of fieldwork scientifically, institutionally and at other levels.
• History of fieldwork: periodisation of fieldwork; fieldwork and the evolution of disciplinary paradigms; evolution of fieldwork procedures and methods;
• Fieldwork narratives: restitutions and representations of fieldwork; textual and iconographic forms and media; drawing and writing practices;
• Theoretical and methodological tools for understanding fieldwork: critical examination of existing theoretical frameworks; new theoretical perspectives;
• Geography and other field disciplines: Convergences in various disciplinary theoretical elaborations of fieldwork practices; fieldwork practices and disciplinary boundaries; what is at stake in the spatial dimension of fieldwork practice in geography?