The “Matter of Nature” in Economic Geography

Bakker, Karen

doi:10.1002/9781118384497.ch6

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…In response, more recent economic geographic work, acknowledging that the 'relationship between categories presumed to be separate and pure are, at best, obfuscatory', has begun to take the 'materiality' of nature seriously (Bakker and Bridge, 2006: p.6). Nonhuman nature might be 'uncooperative' (Bakker, 2003), a source of unpredictability, unruliness and resistance to human action (Bakker and Bridge, 2006;Bakker, 2012), not infinitely malleable but possessing generative capacities confounding efforts to produce nature in particular ways (Bridge, 2011;Prudham, 2003).…”

Section: Animating Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animating capital: Work, commodities, circulation

Barua

2019

Progress in Human Geography

109

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Relations between nature and capital have been a longstanding concern in the social sciences. Going beyond antinomies of posthumanist and political economic enquiry, this paper advances a set of relational analytics for incorporating liveliness into critical analyses of capital. Firstly, developing the concept of animal work, it shows how metabolic, ecological and affective labour become a productive economic force. Secondly, animating the commodity, it demonstrates how lively forces influence commodification and exchange, enabling or hindering accumulation. Thirdly, tracking animal circulation, it examines the logics of rendition that transform nonhuman life into capital. In conclusion, the paper develops a relational grammar for anatomizing the nature-capital dynamic, one that reorients the economic to be coconstituted by the ecological from the outset.

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Section: Animating Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animating capital: Work, commodities, circulation

Barua

2019

Progress in Human Geography

109

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“…The governance of intermediate (mediated market‐coordination) and down‐stream segments (increasingly relational coordination) of Kolkata's plastic recycling networks varies in accordance with the specific social‐metabolic processes involved. These direct entanglements of recycling, as material and economic processes, reflect the ‘mutual constitutiveness of economic and environmental change’ (Bakker, : 109). Moreover, my research indicates that the allocative capacities entailed in prevailing forms of governance serve to translate the supply‐orientation imposed by the nature of plastic waste flows (Crang et al ., ) into the demand‐orientation imperative to plastic manufacturing.…”

Section: The Contested Social Metabolism Of Plastic Recycling Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Drawing on contributions to the emerging field of Environmental Economic Geography (EEG; e.g. Braun et al ., , ) and its ‘sympathetic critique’ (Bridge, ) and extension (Bakker, ), I argue for an integrated analysis of economic and environmental change. This involves both the perpetual entanglement of material transformations and economic transactions, as well as co‐constituted structural change of environments and economies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental change and the informal plastic recycling networks of Kolkata

Schlitz

2020

Singap J Trop Geogr

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This article introduces plastic recycling networks in Kolkata, India, as a case to illustrate the contradictory entanglement of economic and environmental change in urban informal contexts of the Global South. In light of the prevailing environmental critique of informal plastic recycling in India, this article discusses plastic recyclers’ environmental impact and contribution as well as the potential to enhance the environmental and economic performance of their business. Network and chain approaches in the emerging field of Environmental Economic Geography are combined with the notion of social metabolism to conceptualize the entanglement of environmental and economic processes as well as socio‐environmental inequalities entailed in recycling networks. The analysis reveals the impact that the heterogeneity and fluctuation of plastic waste supply has on the economic organization of recycling networks, giving rise to distinct forms of governance in its intermediate and down‐stream segments. Such an integrated perspective also serves to explain why environmental upgrading is hard to achieve under prevailing circumstances by plastic recyclers in Kolkata. Based on an assessment of the social and political conditions of informality under which plastic recyclers operate, the adoption of common assumptions about ecological modernization imbuing parts of Environmental Economic Geography is called into question.

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“…Importantly, by harnessing the ‘scapes’ suffix, representing extractive terrains as minescapes emphasises both their dynamic and often contested socio‐cultural relations, and their material‐discursive dimensions. Effectively, this emphasis facilitates critical reflection and awareness of resources and resource extraction as entities that are ‘more than merely economic’; they are in fact ‘relationally constituted’ (Bakker , 113). Therefore, by extension, the use of the term minescapes characterises extractive space as relationally constituted and assembled.…”

Section: Unpacking the ‘Minescape’: Appadurai And ‘Scapes’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the minescape: engaging with the complexity of the extractive sector

Sherval

2015

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This paper introduces the concept of the minescape as a conceptual and imaginative tool through which to integrate and represent growing shifts in the way natural resource extraction is understood. In recent years, traditional perceptions of extractive processes as 'natural' and purely economic in nature have been increasingly challenged by new developments within the fields of human geography and anthropology. Likewise, growing insights into the multifaceted socio-cultural terrain of extractive operations, and burgeoning work on the interplay of materiality and discourse within the extractive sector, have also transformed the way that extractive processes (and their potentialities) are being conceptualised. The concept of the minescape aims to draw together significant insights concerning the extractive sector, which are increasingly being deployed when representing extractive spaces. Appropriating the term from its current use in fine art, the minescape joins a number of recent appropriations of the 'scapes' suffix to capture the expanding analytical scope of extractive sector inquiry. In essence, the minescape stands as a representational tool that underscores the intricate ways in which extractive processes are imbued with complex socio-cultural dynamics, and powerful material and discursive elements.

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The “Matter of Nature” in Economic Geography

Cited by 16 publications

References 78 publications

Animating capital: Work, commodities, circulation

Animating capital: Work, commodities, circulation

Environmental change and the informal plastic recycling networks of Kolkata

Exploring the minescape: engaging with the complexity of the extractive sector

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