Material worlds? Resource geographies and the `matter of nature'

Abstract

Concepts of 'materiality are increasingly invoked in human geography. This paper discusses several recent and influential workings of materiality, and examines their implications for resource geographies. First, we identify a set of analytical questions at the heart of resource geography and characterize the dominant approaches to these questions -the 'production of nature and the 'social construction of nature'-as yielding diminishing returns. Second, we survey recent work on materiality relating to commodities, corporeality and hybridity and advance the claim that this work provides a number of fresh perspectives with which to revive resource geography. Third, we highlight three specific themes within this research: a radical redistribution and decentering of agency; a revitalization of the concept of 'construction'; and an acknowledgement of the political-economic implications that flow from a world that is biophysically heterogeneous. Finally, we draw on this analysis to explore how progress might be made in the conceptualization and empirical study of resources.

Pimping Climate Change: Richard Branson, Global Warming, and the Performance of Green Capitalism

“…Maybe they are right. Yet, in the context of various calls to attend to the material action or`agency' of nonhuman beings and processes in our geographical work (for syntheses see Bakker and Bridge, 2006;Braun, 2005), and as the distinct categories of nature and culture become dissolved in favour of hybrids, assemblages, and socionatures (see eg Castree, 2003;Gandy, 2002;Kaika, 2005;Latour, 1993;Swyngedouw, 1999;Whatmore, 2002), Harvey's challenge in Justice Nature and the Geography of Difference remains noteworthy:`W hat I am proposing is a way of depicting the fundamental physical and biological conditions and processes that work through all social, cultural, and economic projects to create a tangible historical geography and to do it in such a way as to not render those physical and biological elements as a banal and passive background to human historical geography '' (1996, page 192). There is a genuine dilemma here: what are we to make of this nonhuman matter which constitutes our geographies?…”

Matter(s) of interest: artefacts, spacing and timing

“…Philo, 2000;Lees, 2002). Although the very notions of matter and materiality as something opposed to culture or the immaterial are to be considered inadequate (Latham and McCormack, 2004), material geographies currently proliferate (Bakker and Bridge, 2006). They develop into multiple directions and draw on multiple sources, including social anthropology, feminist theory, and science, technology and society (STS) studies.…”

Laboratories, Laws, and the Career of a Commodity

“…Ambiguity always lurks." Douglas (1992, page 9) The rematerialization of social science is well under way, on the premise that matter does matter (Bakker and Bridge, 2006;Saldanha, 2006), although within this surge of literature it could perhaps be argued that "materiality" as a concept is in danger of losing its coherence. Studies are now multiplying across a spectrum ranging from objects-inthemselves, through the objectification of social relations, to embodied materialities, and further on to the relational ontology of writers on posthumanism and technonatures.…”