Materiality Bakker

Progress in Human Geography 30, 1 (2006) pp.
527
Material worlds? Resource geographies

and the matter of nature
Karen Bakker1* and Gavin Bridge2
1Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Room 217,
1984 West Mall, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z2, Canada
2Geography, School of Environment and Development, University of
Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
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 acknowl-
edgement 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.
Key words: agency, embodiment, environment, hybrid, materiality, nature, resource geography,
resources, textuality.
I Introduction material and the social intertwine and

Notions of materiality and the material are interact in all manner of promiscuous combi-
abroad. Over the past few years human geog- nations (Thrift, 1996: 24; Braun and Castree,
raphers have explored novel ways of account- 1998; Whatmore, 1999: 27). These recent
ing for the physicality and copresence of invocations of the non-human reflect a
the non-human both animate nature and growing unease with the way contemporary
inanimate things within conventional human geography has tended to discount the
human worlds. Several critical interventions non-human worlds of nature and objects.
have sought a rematerialization of human This rediscovery of the material spans
geography after the cultural turn; calling, for a range of human geographys subdisciplines.
example, for recognition of the way that the In cultural geography, for example, rethinking
*Author for correspondence. Email: [email protected]
2006 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd 10.1191/0309132506ph588oa

6 Material worlds? Resource geographies and the matter of nature
the object is invoked as a means of reincor- Our argument proceeds in three stages.
porating (and rediscovering) the materiality First, we characterize contemporary Anglo-
of everyday life, or of accessing the relation- American research on the geographies
ships between commodities, cultural identity of resources and note a significant split
and the politics of value (see, for example, between, on the one hand, a substantial
Jackson and Holbrook, 1995; Crang, 1996; literature (and an allied teaching mission)
Cook and Crang, 1996; Leslie and Reimer, dedicated to the practices of resource and/
1999; Jackson, 1999; 2002; Philo, 2000; or environmental management and, on the
Hughes, 2000; Hughes and Reimer, 2003; other, a critical literature that does not self-
Bridge and Smith, 2003; Anderson and identify as resource geography but which,
Tolia-Kelly, 2004). In urban geography, the nonetheless, is centrally concerned with the
question of urban materialities is at the center identification, appropriation and management
of a debate between conventional political- of biophysical processes for the provisioning of
economy and non-representational approaches capitalist societies. We identify how these
(Lees, 2002; Latham and McCormack, 2004). different components of the resources litera-
The work of some feminist geographers and ture present particular challenges, and how
disability researchers seeks to productively their limitations define the conceptual space
reclaim the materiality of the body (so often within which a revived resource geography
denied in social-constructionist accounts) as might emerge.
an extension of the situated self , a way to Second, we focus on work on resources
express how subjectivities are shaped by and the environment within the tradition of
the experience of acting in, on and through critical political economy, and argue that it
the physical body (see, for example, Bell and deploys theoretical devices production of
Valentine, 1995; Duncan, 1996; Imrie, 1996; nature and/or the social construction of
Longhurst, 1997; Dyck, 1998; 2003; Parr, 1998; nature which have yielded diminishing
Teather, 1999; Valentine, 1999; Chouinard, returns for some time. On this matter we
1999; 2002; Silvey, 2004). concur with the argument made by others
As we explore in this paper, this re- notably by Latour (1993) and Whatmore
engagement with questions of materiality has (2002) to the effect that analyses premised
much relevance for geographies of resources on further refining the nature of the relation-
and the environment. Appeals to materiality ship between categories presumed to be
are, of course, not all of a piece; as we exam- separate and pure are, at best, obfuscatory. It
ine below, the plasticity of the term can elide is here, we claim, that engagements with
different and even incompatible ontological materiality elsewhere in human geography
commitments. Nonetheless, the proposition (and cognate disciplines) can be particularly
with which we open this paper is that mate- helpful for working through a number of
riality can provide a productive, if uncon- analytical challenges associated with work
ventional cut through which to interrogate on geographies of resources. These include
persistent questions raised by recent work the functioning of the econonatural net-
on the geography of resources. Our objective, works through which nature is transformed
in short, is to champion resource geography into resources, commodities and conditions
as an intellectually vibrant and politically of production (Castree, 2003); the mutual
significant arena for critical inquiry and, production, transformation and regulation of
through this paper, to explore how insights biophysical and socio-economic processes
from work on materiality within several of (Swyngedouw, 1999); and the productive and
geographys other subdisciplines may help to generative capacities of the non-human (see,
shape a research agenda for new work on for example, Smith, 1984; 1996; Castree,
the geographies of resources. 1995; 1997; Drummond and Marsden, 1995;
Karen Bakker and Gavin Bridge 7
Gibbs, 1996; 2000; Gandy, 1997; Bakker, with stunning clarity in popular struggles over
2000; Bridge, 2000; Gibbs et al., 2002; Jonas resource appropriation; nature continues
and Bridge, 2003). To support this claim we to enjoy a prolonged moment in the sun
examine three areas of geographical writing: within academic inquiry; and yet the scope
on commodities, corporeality and hybridity. and purpose even the existence of a
Third, we identify what we regard as formal subdiscipline of resource geography
three significant implications for resource are surprisingly unclear. This journal, for
geography of this work on materiality: a radical example, has not published work that identi-
redistribution and decentering of agency; a fies itself as resource geography since the
revitalization of the concept of construction; early 1990s (Wescoat, 1991; 1992; 1993). The
and an acknowledgement of the political- disappearance of resource geography as a
economic implications that flow from a world formal field, however, is misleading. There
that is biophysically heterogeneous. In the is, on the one hand, a substantial body of
concluding section of the paper, therefore, work in the applied and teaching traditions
we explore how invocations of materiality of resource management and environmental
illuminate new ways of thinking about conservation that embraces the term
resources, and draw on this discussion to resource unproblematically, and which seeks
outline how progress might be made in the to organize, administer and produce new
conceptualization and empirical study of resource geographies that operationalize
resources. By exploring what work on mate- public and/or private management objectives
riality might mean for research on the like efficiency, the optimization of welfare, or
geographies of resources, our hope is both to sustainability (Mitchell, 1989; Cutter et al.,
engage those whose work addresses the core 1991; Holechek et al., 2000; Shenk and
concerns of provisioning within capitalist Franklin, 2001; Chiras et al., 2002). On the
societies (but who currently do not self- other hand, resources (soil, groundwater,
identify as resource geographers), and to high- timber, fish) form the empirical heart of some
light the opportunities for cross-fertilization of the most exciting theoretically informed
with those researchers and practitioners who research by geographers in recent years: most
are daily engaged in the practices of resource often, however, this work flies under the
management.1 flag of political ecology, eco-Marxism, agro-
In the following section we explore recent food studies or environmental history, and
works within human geography and related applies to resources rather than derives
disciplines that challenge the common sense from them theoretical approaches (like the
naturalism of resources, and identify production of nature or the social construc-
impasses within these debates. In subsequent tion of nature) developed elsewhere in geo-
sections we examine how a sustained engage- graphy (Castree 2005). In short, if resource
ment with the materiality of resources may geography is recognized at all it is most often
offer a route beyond these impasses, and as a managerialist agenda and not as a theo-
provide a distinctive research agenda for a retically vibrant area of inquiry or a field with
revived resources geography. its own set of approaches. In this section we
examine how a sustained engagement with
II Materiality and resources the materiality of resources may provide a dis-
Something rather strange has happened to tinctive research agenda for a revived
resource geography. Issues of resource resources geography.
supply, resource control and the effects of To a degree, this resurgence of studies
rampant resource consumption on planetary of resource geographies was anticipated
health are now resurgent in geopolitics; ques- by FitzSimmons (1989) call to place the
tions about value and identity are articulated matter of nature squarely within the sights
of a politically engaged human geography. materiality is readily conflated with the

FitzSimmons decried the peculiar silence actual, tangible and visceral (cf. Latham and
on the . . . geographical and historical dialectic McCormack, 2004). This tendency is fre-
between societies and their material envi- quently compounded by the rhetorical
ronments within human geography, while presentation of resource/environmental geo-
acknowledging that calling forth the material graphy as the bridge or glue between human
is not unproblematic. Indeed, as recent dis- and physical, the middle drawer in the dis-
cussion of urban (im)materialities makes clear, ciplinary dresser (lying above earth-surface
concepts of materiality can be enlisted to processes but beneath economy and society,
shore up, as well as radically challenge, con- a solid foundation to which the latter may be
ventional modes of explanation (Lees, 2002; tethered). Thus, with some significant excep-
Latham and McCormack, 2004). tions (see below), resource and environmen-
This ambivalence characterizes much tal geography have conceptualized nature in
recent research on materiality across human predominantly physical terms: as an assem-
geography. Should materiality be conceptual- blage of things independent of (although
ized in predominantly physical terms as a raw related to) society, whose properties (respon-
substrate, a bedrock reality counterposed to siveness to technology, geographical location)
the social, cultural and textual? Or should and social utility are revealed by science.
materiality be conceptualized in ways that do Research in these fields has traditionally
not simply collapse one pole of the dualism focused on improving the flow of resources
into the other, or outside of a dualist frame- from nature and to society (or minimizing
work altogether? In other words, what is the effects of flows from society to nature),
required to think about materiality in ways through the design of institutional and territo-
that are simultaneously physical and cultural, rial frameworks for procuring environmental
that admit the significance of the physical goods and services and managing biophysical
but which also recognize that materiality is systems. This stands in contrast, of course, to
uncontainable in physicalist terms alone much work in the field of political ecology, in
(Grosz, 1994; xi)? If one adopts the ontologi- which the mutual production of society-
cal position that non-human entities have nature relations has been central to research
active capacities in making history and geo- and analysis for the better part of three
graphy (Castree, 1995: 13), then one needs a decades (see, for example, Peluso, 1992;
way to express the physicality and causality of Rocheleau et al., 1996; Blaikie, 1999; Escobar,
the non-human without straying into object 1999; Watts, 2000; Forsyth, 2002; Peet and
fetishism, or without attributing intrinsic Watts, 2004; Robbins, 2004).
qualities to entities/categories whose bound- The material, in short, has deep roots in
aries are extrinsic (ie, that are defined, at least the study of resources within geography,
in part, socioculturally). To the skeptic, then, where it has often been treated unproblemat-
the resurgence of the material after a decade ically as a category external to society. Given
of social constructionism should be reason this disciplinary history, any contemporary
for pause, since it raises spectres of worn- appeal to materiality might be undertstood to
out dualisms, resurgent physicalism, object imply an antediluvian indulgence in natural
fetishism and environmental determinism.2 realism. Yet the actual practices of resource
These concerns are particularly apposite in acquisition suggest this resolutely physical
resource and environmental geographies, understanding of materiality is something of
which have tended to cleave to an epistemol- a fiction. To take one example, consider the
ogy of natural realism. In a subdiscipline work of exploration geologists in determining
devoted to the gritty and fleshy realities of the location and value of a mineral resource:
water, soil, timber, minerals and animals, frequently described as a discovery (nature
as external, revealed through science), the commonsense naturalism with which

mineral exploration negotiates an extremely research on natural resources is often asso-
heterogeneous biophysical world and cre- ciated. These challenges come from work
atively produces the target resource (as on the social construction of nature and the
opposed to finding something whose bound- production of nature, both of which wrestle
aries are pre-existing). Attention to the with the relationship between the natural
practices of resource and environmental and the social, and with related questions
management thus reveals the inadequacy of of agency. The production of nature thesis
a purely physical understanding of materiality: (Smith, 1984; Roberts and Emel, 1992;
as Latour (1993) points out, it is through these Gregory, 2001), for example, repositions
practices of translation that nature and nature as an outcome of social relations
society get churned up every day. rather than an asocial input to the economy
Of course, resource geography from its (Harvey, 1974): it is through the socio-
beginnings has contained a strand that, by economic production of nature that the
recognizing the constitutive role of knowledge geographically uneven character of capi-
in any determination of resources, insists on talist development takes shape. The lasting
their irreducibly cultural nature. The work of achievement of research on the production
Zimmerman (1933) or the Chicago-school of nature has been to demonstrate how
of natural hazards research (White, 1945), socio-economic forms (eg, the city) and
for example, claims resources as cultural socio-economic processes (eg, industrializa-
appraisals of nature and positions them on the tion, urbanization) rest on a more funda-
boundary, part-way between the pure realms mental process through which exchangeable
of nature and society. The value of this weak values are produced by transforming or
form of social constructivism is that it turns metabolizing nature (see, for example,
resources into a dynamic category rather Worster, 1985; Kloppenburg, 1988; Cronon,
than resources being, they become: what 1991; Swyngedouw, 1999; Brechin, 1999;
counts as a resource depends on the inter- Zimmerer, 2000; Gandy, 2002).
action between biophysical heterogeneity Valuable as the production of nature has
(the variation in physical conditions that been as a guiding framework in this task, it
produces differential land rents, or the vari- remains limited for at least two reasons. First,
able grade/quality of mineral resources, for the historical materialism upon which this lit-
example) and social institutions. To be clear, erature draws has struggled with how to rep-
this work does not represent a recognition of resent the active capacities of biophysical
translation suggested by Latour (1993: 78) it processes dialectically without invoking an
is in fact the very mixture of two pure forms external nature. The production of nature
that he rejects (and in this sense it is resolutely thesis tries to solve this historically by inter-
part of Latours modern Constitution) but nalizing nature as a social product but, by
it demonstrates nonetheless the existence of envisioning first nature transformed via
a heterodox tradition within resource geo- labor, ends up squeezing out any productive
graphy that has sought to grapple with the or generative role for ecological or biophysical
problem of materiality outside of a narrowly processes (for an exception, see Benton, 1992).
physical frame. This long-standing recognition The engagement by resource geographers
of resources as explicitly socionatural phe- with the production of nature thesis has at
nomena suggests that geographical research times, therefore, taken the form of a sympa-
on resources may be particularly receptive to thetic critique. While affirming the importance
the insights of recent work on materiality. of a perspective that understands resources
Resource geography more recently has and environments as political-economic
been permeated by still stronger challenges to projects (eg, Roberts and Emel, 1992),
research has nonetheless highlighted the ways latters conflation of the material with the
in which biophysical materials and processes empirical reposes on the realist ontologies
are not infinitely malleable: nature is indeed underlying much natural science and con-
produced, yet the processes and capacities ventional economics and is at odds with the
that constitute nature frequently resist or historical materialist perspective underlying
confound its production in ways that enable the former interpretation. It is, for example,
accumulation. Work in rural sociology and one thing to chart the flows of materials/
agricultural geography, for example, has commodities that undergird contemporary
sought to explain the failure of capitalist capitalism, and another to argue that it is the
social relations fully to penetrate agricultural politicization of the social relations around
production (exemplified by the persistence of these flows that drives social change.3
the family farm) by reference to the disunity Materiality is handled with similar ambiva-
of production time and working time in agri- lence within work on the social construction
culture (the fact that there are long periods of nature. Contributors to this expansive
of time when photosynthesis is occurring but literature share a common concern with the
human labor is not) (Mann and Dickinson, circulation and reinterpretation of particular
1978; Goodman et al., 1987; Fine, 1994). In discursive constructs, yet the ontological
these accounts, therefore, the biological underpinnings of this work often diverge
processes of agriculture represent obstacles sharply. As a way of sorting through these
to capital which significantly shape the form differences, Demeritt (2002, following
that social relations take in the agricultural Hacking, 1999) proposes a helpful distinc-
sector. Other accounts maintain a consti- tion between construction-as-refutation and
tutive role for the materiality of biophysical construction-as-philosophical-critique. The
processes, yet reject the language of obsta- former, he argues, seeks to refute taken-for-
cles as unnecessarily confining: Kloppenburg granted beliefs about the essential nature of
(1988), for example, characterizes seed corn things by showing how particular concepts
as a vehicle for accumulation because of the and categorizations of the material world
increasing capacity for biologically based sec- have been produced and sustained over time
tors of the economy to integrate accelerated (Demeritt, 2002: 769). Materiality, in this
biological returns into the circuits of capital; formulation, occupies an inconsistent position:
while Henderson (1998) deftly illustrates how on the one hand, construction-as-refutation
obstacles to production are in fact opportuni- centers on exposing apparently essential
ties from the perspective of capital circulation, properties or conditions of nature as social
and how temporal and spatial disunities of constructions; while, on the other, it simulta-
agricultural production in early twentieth cen- neously conceptualizes materiality as bedrock
tury California (rooted in the physical nature naturalism, a reservoir of truth with which to
of agriculture and the states diverse ecotones) denaturalize received wisdoms by exposing
created conditions for the growth of credit. them as merely (incorrect) constructions
Second, references to the materiality of (a position which, Demeritt notes, accords
nature in this work float uneasily between with the traditional epistemological positions
materiality understood as the (socio-ecological) of empiricism, positivism and critical realism).
conditions of production which provide the In contrast, those engaging in what Demeritt
motor for history; and materiality as the terms construction-as-philosophical critique
empirical stuff of nature coursing through assert that the social significance of the
the econonatural networks (to use Castrees, material world lies primarily (or even solely)
2002a, phrase) of commodity chains and in the way it is mobilized discursively via
provisioning systems (Fine et al., 1996). social-semiotic processes of knowledge pro-
These are quite different meanings: the duction and claims-making. With materiality
rendered as the production and circulation of them with other beings and things in ways
textual referents, construction-as-philosophical that give them political life. Further more, this
critique leaves little room for the autonomy conception of natures agency relies on a
(let alone agency) of the non-human. Like dualist ontology of subjects (having agency)
the production of nature, then, the social and objects (on and through which subjects
construction of nature framework both cre- agency is expressed) an ontology which has
ates and is confounded by the question of how been the subject of thorough critique, as
to account for the socio-economic production explored below. As frameworks for analysis,
and discursive construction of nature, while both the production of nature and the social
simultaneously acknowledging the productive construction of nature risk mobilizing (and,
capacities of the non-human world (see, for therefore, shoring up rather than transcend-
example, Myers, 1990; Zimmerer, 1993; Braun, ing) conventional dualistic conceptions of
2002; Bickerstaff and Walker, 2003). nature and society. Our argument, then, is
An additional critique of both the social that any further finessing of these approaches
construction of nature and production of will yield only limited returns. In the following
nature frameworks is the tendency to move section we begin to examine how recent
too rapidly from the concrete to the universal, work on materiality can offer a promising
so that diverse materialities become conflated route out of this impasse, opening up possi-
into the unitary category nature. The result bilities for new perspectives on agency, and
is an underappreciation of the high degree of revitalizing the concepts of production and
internal differentiation within what gets construction.
called the natural world. As FitzSimmons
(2003) points out, this tendency to fail to III Invoking the material
recognize the distinct qualities of different In this section, we examine three distinct
resources is often characterized by the lack of approaches to materiality: commodity stories
a basic distinction between living organisms of resource production and consumption;
and non-living (abiotic) things (water, minerals), textuality and corporeality; and hybridity.
despite the fact that the rules of assembly for This parsing of such a vast literature is, of
abiotic components of ecosystems are quite course, contrived; our focus is necessarily
different from those of living things. selective, given that our goal is not to survey
Underlying this failure to differentiate the literature in its entirety, but rather to gen-
between the different capacities for action erate a dialogue among resource geographers
that beings and things have in the natural about how and why materiality has been
world, we argue, are two problematic receiving increased attention across the disci-
assumptions about agency. Research on the pline of geography and in cognate disciplines,
ways in which materiality shapes social life and to explore the implications for resource
often fails to take into account the different geographies.
modes through which material properties
come to have political life. Agency may be 1 Commodity stories: material cultures
a useful concept for claiming the status of consumption and production
of political subject for non-human species A significant body of work has emerged
(ie, as a political tool for levelling up the within anthropology over the last couple of
non-human world) but it does not seem decades (and has entered geography more
appropriate for capturing the dynamic prop- recently), building on the notion that social
erties of non-living natures such as landfill worlds are as much constituted by materiality
leachate, acid mine wastes, or groundwater as the other way around (Miller, 1998: 3). In
flow biophysical processes that are not living, much of this work, the concept of materiality is
but which have a dynamic that entangles deployed in reference to objects, commodities
and artifacts, invoking material things as their origins in social relations that are largely
physical constituents of sociocultural prac- obscured by the commodity form, this work
tice. Through studies of the way commodities demonstrates how commodities through
and artifacts are used in everyday life, this their circulation, exchange and use also per-
work seeks to demonstrate how material form myriad social functions as things in
things through practices such as exchange, motion.
use and disposal play important roles in the In work on material cultures, then, mate-
constitution of social relations: to show, as riality both invokes the importance of the
Miller puts it, why some things matter tangible world of things in constructing social
where mattering means more than simply reality and draws attention to the meanings
making a difference or being significant, that attach to the surfaces of commodities.
and alludes to the individual and collective Speaking of the biography of things may
identities and subjectivities that form in rela- sound like commodity fetishism, yet this work
tion to commodities. Drawing inspiration takes fetishization seriously, by seeking to
from critiques of the nature-culture binary understand the sensuous, concrete and poly-
which have dominated anthropological valent nature of commodities as they inhabit
research (see, for example, Ingold, 1986; our daily lives (Leslie and Reimer, 1999),
Descola and Plssen, 1996) and ethnographic rather than passing fetishization off as some-
research on the way humans interact with thing to be transcended. This interest in
various object worlds (see, for example, getting with the fetish (Castree, 2001) by
Appadurai, 1986; Miller, 1987; 1998; Graves- focusing on the properties and meanings asso-
Brown, 2000), work on the geographical and ciated with the consumption and circulation
social lives of things has spilled into geogra- of commodities across space and time does
phy through the work of Crang, Jackson and not mean that these properties and meanings
others so that the pursuit of commodity should be regarded as intrinsic. Rather, prop-
stories, as Hughes and Reimer put it (2003) erties and meanings are seen to emerge from
has become an increasingly prominent the interaction of objects with social processes.
activity within cultural geography (Crang, As a result, the meanings attached to things
1996; Cook and Crang, 1996; Jackson, 1999; (and the identities and subjectivities produced
Hughes, 2000; Kearnes, 2003). through these attachments) are multivalent
In deploying concepts of materiality and and fluid, as demonstrated by an increasing
material culture, this work performs a shift body of work on commodity cultures and
in the meaning of materiality from the dead the mundane material worlds of shopping,
world of artifacts products of human labor eating, fashion and dwelling (eg, Jackson and
and culture to the living world of objects Holbrook, 1995; Cook and Crang, 1996;
as constituents of social relations (Jackson, Crewe, 2000; Crang et al., 2003).
2000). According to some critics, such calls Through their focus on the everyday prac-
for the rematerialization of geographical tices and spaces in which people interact with
analysis risk shoring up the material/discursive things, studies of material culture (as outlined
dichotomy which acts as a smokescreen for above) have effectively shifted the empirical
distrust of contemporary semiotic, textual focus implied by materiality to the world of
and deconstructive methodologies (Kearnes, consumption. The implications for resource
2003: 144). Yet much of this work promises geographies are twofold. First, research
to challenge the reductionist notion that the should engage with resources in ways that
social life of commodities can fully be under- creatively transcend the categories of pro-
stood by interpreting it as a (superstructural) duction and consumption. This implies more
product of (deeper) social relations. than simply adding in a consumptive dimen-
Conceding that commodities do indeed have sion as a counterweight to the excessively
productivist focus that characterizes most production of interchangeable parts and the
work on resources. Recent work on food/ cultural values associated with the mass
agriculture, for example, has sought to move consumption of standardized products.4
beyond the facile (yet politically productive) Thus, a second implication for the study of
distinctions of crop (production) and food resources is the need to acknowledge how
(consumption) (eg, Freidberg, 2004). Political the meanings and cultural associations of
economists such as Hartwick have critiqued commodities are constitutive of their geo-
conventional models of resource provisioning graphies and histories. Resources, in other
systems on similar grounds, arguing for the words, are far more than the economic.
need to dispense with the analytical distinc- Mintzs (1985) classic history of sugar pro-
tion between nature and commodities and vides a guide here: its rich anthropological
the academic division of labor between account of the differentiation of sugar as a
studies of production and consumption. Her cultural commodity articulates the dramatic
attempt to reconnect consumption and socio-ecological transformations of Jamaica,
production analytically via a materialist com- Barbados, Cuba and Brazil as sugar colonies
modity chain analysis of commodities such as with the social and cultural transformations of
blood diamonds, oil, timber or gold is also an industrialization in Britain and Europe, and
effort to connect consumers and producers refuses to read the rise of sugar in economic
politically, and thereby counter the depoliti- or physical (ie, nutritional) terms alone. To
cization of commodities which accompanies date it is predominantly the discretionary
most conventional approaches to resources commodities (such as food and fashion,
(Hartwick, 1998; 2000). Narrating com- where consumer choice and cultural taste
modity stories about global resource flows play an overt role) that have been subject to
has almost achieved the status of a genre: it cultural analysis. Yet industrial commodities
has been undertaken by a growing number of those that come closer to a classic definition
researchers within geography (see, for example, of fungible commodities should not be
Gwynne, 1999; Mather, 1999; Le Heron et al., exempt from this cultural analysis. To extend
2001; MacLachlan, 2001; Hayward and Le our earlier examples, an account of the
Heron, 2002; Mansfield, 2003; Elias and prodigious rise of nickel production and
Carney, 2004; Guthman, 2004) as well as in consumption during the twentieth century,
popular microhistories focused on single would need to recognize the cultural values of
commodities (for example, Kurlansky, 1997; sterility, cleanliness and progress coded as
2002; Cohen, 1997; Zuckerman, 1999; Gately, aspiration for material possessions associated
2003). As Cook (2004) vividly describes (for a with the properties of stainless steel (an iron-
tropical fruits like the papaya), working with nickel alloy accounting for over half of the
the materiality of commodities to lift the veil total demand for nickel).
of commodity fetishism means more than a
simple tracing to reveal their physical 2 Bodies and texts: materiality as
flows and connections: commodity stories inscription and embodiment
that aim to defetishize exotic things play A distinct conceptualization of materiality,
with the inherent instability of materiality, and of the relationship between humans and
emphasizing the different ways in which non-humans, arises in work on the relation-
traces of production can linger in the expe- ship between the material and the textual.
rience of consumption. For example, an Kay (2000), for example, explores how genet-
account of Fordism has yet to be written that ics came to be represented through the
takes seriously the properties of new steels textual metaphor of script, information or
(hardness, ductility, physical and chemical code despite empirical evidence about the
stability, durability) in enabling the mass behavior of genes which suggested the limits
of the metaphor. Along with others, Kay significant sites of cultural spectacle, key
demonstrates how what we understand to be spaces through which we come to understand
material nature is not a reflection of proper- the processes shaping society and seek to
ties intrinsic to nature but rather a projection work out alternative forms of social relations
onto the material world, via language, of (Bridge, 2001). However, the risk arises of
categories which are irreducibly social, and overlooking ways in which the physical prop-
culturally rooted. Science, in other words, is erties of a resource (whether it is ubiquitous or
not natures mirror (Rorty, 1981). localized, whether it exhibits a high degree of
This strategy of social construction is excludability and subtractability, whether its
shared across many subdisciplines in geo- production as a commodity requires the mobi-
graphy and beyond (Demeritt, 2002). It lization of massive amounts of energy/capital)
places emphasis on the representation of the influence the political-economic relations
material world through the reading, (re)writ- within which a commodity becomes embed-
ing and enactment of texts (broadly defined), ded. For example, Le Billon has documented
and how these texts and signifying practices how the biophysical properties of specific
discursively construct material conditions resources influence their lootability and
by virtue of the ways in which they circulate shape the strategies mobilized by combatants
within and variously enable and constrain in resource revenue-dependent war eco-
relations of power. Another important nomies: guerrilla activity is more compatible
contribution of a focus on textuality is the with easily accessible alluvial diamonds
foregrounding of relationships between than with concentrated petroleum deposits
knowledge, representation, discourse and whose exploitation requires a high degree of
power (see, for example, Barnes and Duncan, technological sophistication the latter more
1992; Braun, 1997; 2002; Delaney, 2001; often associated with military coups and
Linnros and Hallin, 2001; Nesbitt and Weiner, secessionist movements (Le Billon, 2001).
2001; Gururani, 2002). Much of this work These properties of the material world can be
is increasingly sensitive to the cultural frames remarkably durable, in contrast to the
within which authors themselves operate, instability of textual constructions subject to
and begins from the assumption that the change over time and space, often in ways
attribution of properties to material things that have considerable social significance
cannot be done outside of a particular cultural (see, for example, the recent emergence of
frame, as scores of studies on the historical counterhegemonic discourses surrounding
construction of various natures have illus- that most romanced of stones, the diamond;
trated (Evernden, 1992; Ross, 1994; Soper, Le Billon, 2006). Baudrillards revenge of
1995; Wolch and Emel, 1998). To speak of the object (1990; 1993) can thus be read
nature, in other words, is to mobilize his- in a double sense: as signification without
torically specific social constructs, such as stable referents; and as the pitfall of fetishing
natural limits, human rights, interspecies the text. To call forth the material thus raises
competition or genetic code. a challenge: how to express the causal role of
Acknowledgement of the textuality of the material without straying into object fetishism
material world is enormously helpful in under- or without attributing intrinsic qualities to
standing the social significance of material entities/categories whose boundaries are
objects, enabling, for example, commodity extrinsic defined, at least in part, socio-
analysis to break out from narrowly econo- culturally? How, in other words, can we insist
mistic approaches by breaking down (artificial) on the importance of things without treating
distinctions between the economic and the them solely as things?
cultural, and by demonstrating how com- Recent work on bodily geographies has
modities (and the spaces that supply them) are grappled directly with these questions (see,
for example, Callard, 1998; Harvey, 1998; Taken together, these varied deployments
McKittrick, 2000; Matless, 2001; Imrie, 2003; of embodiment can be understood to make
Little and Leyshon, 2003). Deploying the four statements about what Jasanoff terms
concept of embodiment as a way of capturing the co-production of beings and social prac-
the physically enframed nature of existence, tices (Jasanoff, 2004). First, this work
this work examines the way in which sub- emphasizes the ways in which broader social
jectivity and identity emerge not from relations and discourses construct material
disembodied consciousness, but from the bodies (see, for example, Nast and Pile, 1998;
experience of acting through and on the Valentine, 1999). Second, this work demon-
physical, visceral and mortal vehicle of the strates how bodies are enrolled in the con-
body. These approaches often entail a struction of social places and spaces and
recognition of the way in which physicality is political economic processes (see, for exam-
socially constructed through a combination ple, Grosz, 1992; McDowell, 1993; Harrison,
of material and discursive practices for 2000). Third, this work emphasizes the
example, through work on the idealization contestation of coproduction along a variety
and acculturation of norms surrounding body of vectors; Butler, for example, emphasizes
shape or eating practices and their inter- the violence of the processes through which
section with corporeal geographies of con- bodies are sexed, and David Harvey reframes
sumption (Valentine, 1999; see also Butler, the body as an accumulation strategy in
1993; Hayles, 1993). Embodiment can thus which the (laboring) body is itself a site
be interpreted as a strategy of liberation of political-economic contestation over the
from the confines and constraints of the processes through which it is created (Butler,
material and also naturalized social worlds, 1993; Harvey, 1998). Fourth, work on
destabilizing natural characteristics of races, embodiment harnesses the sensuous capaci-
genders and cultures. ties of the body (smell, sound, taste, touch) as
Efforts to understand corporeality in a way to move beyond the optical register
terms of the materially situated self extend and, in so doing, to diminish the cognitive and
earlier notions of situated knowledges, metaphorical privilege accorded to sight
which were largely about situatedness within within academic inquiry (Whatmore, 2002:
a web of social constructs such as gender, 33, following Serres, 1985; see also Rodaway,
race, and class (see, for example, Jackson, 1994).
1987; Rose, 1993). Work on the materiality Recent work on bodily geographies and
of social life focuses, in contrast, on the the corporeal is relevant to resource geo-
situatedness of living in and through the graphy for two reasons: like work on
physical body, through which lived exper- resources, it grapples with the simultaneously
ience both social and material is embodied biophysical and social character of material
(Nast andPile, 1998; Nelson, 1999; Harrison, existence; and, in the hands of writers such as
2000; McKittrick, 2000; Longhurst, 2001; Butler and Grosz, it provides a method for
2002; Parr, 2001; Bondi et al., 2002; engaging with the way socially significant
Hyams, 2003). The point here is to temper distinctions are produced from a richly het-
the social constructionism which effaces the erogeneous physical world by, for example,
body by, for example, not severing entirely reiterating some physical variations but not
the feminine from female morphology. Calls others. In other words, it provides a way to
for a theory of the flesh are, as Whatmore acknowledge physicality/corporeality and
(2002: 154) points out, narrative strategies the sociopolitically productive nature of
designed to achieve this shift in focus physical variation without surrendering
(Whatmore, citing Moraga and Anzaldua, the social to the biological. This work provides
1981: 23). a way of understanding the body in dialectical
terms: a physically enframed, material pres- the nature-culture dualism for some, the
ence constituted through processes that are Achilles, heel of conventional geographical
simultaneously internal and external, social treatments of nature.
and natural, and which render the body a cer- The famously proliferating nature of quasi-
tain degree of historical and geographical objects (Latour, 1993) has been matched in
malleability (Harvey, 2000: 98). Work on the last few years by an efflorescence of writ-
embodiment, in other words, adroitly estab- ing on the hybrid within the social sciences.
lishes the social construction of the material The result is a diversity of invocations of
world without falling into the trap of social hybridity that can express significant differ-
reductionism, and similarly engages with the ences in their conceptualization of materiality.
material conditions shaping social life without In some accounts, the hybrids primary sign-
falling prey to biological essentialism a ificance is its role as a prominent marker of
debate with which resource geographers have a temporal cleavage: with technoscientific
long been concerned. change blurring the boundaries of nature and
technology, the propagation of hybrids in
3 Mongrel materialities: hybridity increasing numbers ushers in a new age of a
The motley materialities of everyday life qualitatively different materiality character-
assume a critical role within recent work on ized by the the end-of-the-millennium seed,
hybridity. The dense interactions of people chip, gene, database, bomb, foetus, race,
and things which characterize the banal brain and ecosystem (Haraway, 1997: 12).
spaces of contemporary society (the lab, the Illustrative of such work is Warks (1994)
fishery, the farm) provide an entry point for elaboration of Third Nature; literal readings
engaging a more pervasive problematic: the of Haraways (1991) cyborg metaphor as a
dualisms upon which is predicated the mod- body/technology splice, focusing on pros-
ern critical stance and the acts of purification thetics, biotechnics and the slow penetration
necessary to construct and maintain such into our daily life of almost invisible techno-
two entirely distinct ontological zones logical gadgets (Terranova, 1996: 167); and
(Latour, 1993: 10). Work on hybridity is char- Lights discussion of artificial life as life in
acterized by an insistence on the mongrel silico (Light, 1997: 184, drawing on Langton,
nature of the world: we navigate a world 1988).
made up of radically incommensurable things, From the point of view of geographies of
suturing them together as we go, yet we con- resources, the most interesting accounts of
struct analytical accounts that present the hybridity eschew this Toffleresque focus on
world as a set of discrete, pure categories. the monstrous/miraculous objects of a fast-
The linguistic appeal to hybridity is, there- arriving tomorrow in favor of the hybrids
fore, no mere whimsy: in the hands of Latour potential for an ontological critique of materi-
(1993), for example, it highlights the onto- ality itself (Latour, 1993; Law, 1994; Law and
logical priority of quasi-objects defined by Mol, 1995). Indeed, the significance of work
associations rather than separations on hybridity for resource geography lies not in
(Castree, 2002a: 118).5 Thus critics of the the figure of the hybrid or quasi-object, which
asymmetrical treatment of nature latent in ultimately are rather blunt analytical devices
much geographical research (Murdoch, 1997; (not least because of the profligacy of
Whatmore, 2002; Castree, 2002a) have hybrids). It lies, rather, in the relational and
turned their attention to documenting the distributed view of materiality that provides a
ways in which these heterogeneous material- way to unpack apparent permanencies and
ities are churned together, a process that stabilities, and to show how the competencies
Latour terms translation. Engaging with and capacities of things are not intrinsic but
materialities, then, is a way of transcending derive from association. Whatmore (2002),
for example, effectively deterritorializes Mitchell, 2004) produces an account that

notions of the wild and shows how they seems to tell only half the story: it reveals
emerge as the apparent properties of species motley assemblages (rather than things
(eg, jaguars, elephants) or spaces (wilderness) with essences) with rare clarity, yet says
only as network effects: to the extent that very little about how or why such assem-
these non-human entities have an active blages are put together, and is often silent
role . . . in making history and geography it is about the tensions and contradictions that
through the way they are embedded in a make the connections so precarious.
wider set of sociotechnical relations (Castree, A distinctive approach to hybridity which
1995: 13). The explicit spatiality of these avoids this pitfall is one which seeks to his-
networks is also a valuable component of toricizes Latours notion of networked asso-
work on hybridity, although in fairness the ciations (Swyngedouw, 1996; 1999; see also
capacity to map relational skeins is not a Castree, 2002a; 2003a; 2003b). Swyngedouw
necessary feature of (nor is it limited to) (1996; 1999) couples Latourian notions of
actor-network theory. This suggests that networked reconstruction with Lefebvres
there is useful work to be done in understand- (1991) concept of the historical and geograph-
ing how the material attributes and qualities ical production of space (nature). In doing
of other resource spaces particularly those so, Swyngedouw develops an approach to
so readily naturalized in physical terms as the urbanization in which it is not the hybrid that
resources of oil fields, watersheds or hot has ontological priority but the process of
spots of biodiversity are produced topolog- hybridization the historical-geographical
ically rather than being inherent or contained process of production, of becoming, of
within those spaces. Renewed attempts in perpetual transgression (Swyngedouw, 1996:
the USA to drill for oil in the Arctic National 73; 1999: 447). The emphasis on the pro-
Wildlife Refuge, for example, suggest the duction of quasi-objects reflects the origins of
analytical value of approaches able to deterri- this approach not in actor-network theory,
torialize some of its more iconic permanen- but in historical materialism and, in par-
cies (not the least of which are its huge oil ticular, within Lefebvre (1991) and Smiths
reserves and white (empty) wilderness) and (1984) work on the production of nature.
show how these politically contending, yet Swyngedouw asserts that we cannot engage
similarly purified, natural spaces are pro- with the agency of actors (whether human or
duced through the conjoining of many different non-human) without examining the geome-
materialities. tries of power which structure production.
This application of hybridity to the study of In Swyngedouws approach, connection and
resources is not without potential pitfalls. As differentiation arise simultaneously through
Kirsch and Mitchell (2004) argue, the empha- process of production, enabling his analysis
sis on connection rather than differentiation of resources (specifically water resources) to
produces a strangely dull critical edge to a take on an explicitly critical edge (Swyngedouw,
field that envisions itself as quite progressive. 2004). As we explore below, this approach
This weakness, as Latour notes (1999, cited opens up promising possibilities for resource
in Kirsch and Mitchell, 2004: 693) is reflected geographies.
in the ridiculous poverty of the ANT vocab-
ulary with its imprecise specification of the IV How does matter matter?
nature of connection as association, transla- Underlying many contemporary conversa-
tion, alliance, obligatory passage point, etc. tions about nature and society is a common
The insistence on connection rather than desire to shift our frames of reference by
differentiation, and on agency rather than saying something quite simple: things other
accountability (Fuller, 2000; Kirsch and than humans make a difference in the way
social relations unfold. Frequently, researchers Thus Bakker (2004), for example, documents
seek to animate the non-human through how water is uncooperative in the process
seeking to understand how matter matters. of commodification and, therefore, a source
Thus work on materialities centers on its pro- of differentiation in the institutions governing
ductive capacities what matter does rather resource access and regulation; while Boyd
than what its essence is (Anderson and et al. (2001) explicitly frame nature as a source
Tolia-Kelly, 2004: 672). Referencing the of surprise on account of the emergent and
material is thus a way of acknowledging unpredictable character of biological systems.
the embeddedness of social action, whether Similarly, work in the nascent field of
it be embedded in world of things, bodies, evolutionary history has begun to identify the
networks or socio-ecological relations. In ways in which emergent properties and
other words, this work tries to do for the behaviours of biophysical systems can
biophysical world what Polanyi (1944) did become historically significant for example,
for the social: that is, to show how conven- the development of insecticide resistance by
tional, contemporary understandings (eg, of some insect species over relatively short time
processes such as globalization) rely on the periods (Russell, 2003; Schrepfer and
abstraction or disembedding of concepts Scranton, 2004). Similar acknowledgement
like the economic from socionature. of the generative capacities of biophysical
Yet the material is more than just a call systems underpins a rethinking of conven-
for a heterogeneously populated world: it is tional ecological models within ecology. For
also an acknowledgement that the things example, researchers have attempted to
(commodities, bodies, biophysical processes) incorporate instability and innovation as char-
that make a difference in the way social acteristics of ecosystems, and to re-envision
relations unfold are not pregiven substrates their unpredictability not as capriciousness
that variably enable and constrain social but as panarchy: inevitably dynamic and
action, but are themselves historical products unpredictable (even playful), thereby opening
of material, representational and symbolic up new worlds of possibility for human-
practices. Thus, the motivation behind a turn nature relationships (Gunderson and Holling,
to the material may be straightforward, but 2002).
doing materiality as analytical and repre- In making the case that matter matters,
sentational practice is considerably more work on materiality has to confront the
complex, as it calls into question many of problematic of how heterogeneous objects
the precepts and concepts with which we join/are joined together such that particular
customarily order the world. To discuss mate- outcomes result. Here the vacillation over
riality, then, is to engage with metaphysical the active/passive verb form is deliberate,
questions of ontology, agency and intention- since it demonstrates how conceptions of
ality, as attested by the linguistic and syntac- agency lie at the heart of much recent work
tic gymnastics that characterize much writing on materiality: do things activate their
on materiality. conjoining, are they conjoined by the opera-
One of the most fruitful outcomes of tion of processes that lie outside them, or do
recent work on materiality is the problemati- things interiorize the processes that produce
zation and reformulation of the concept of them such that it makes sense to speak of
agency. Recent work has sought to recapture them as both conjoined and complicit in
the lively capacities of biophysical systems their conjoining? In addressing this problem-
by taking seriously the question of how the atic, much of the work on materiality strives
different materialities of resources may be to denaturalize agency as an inherently or
sources of unpredictability, unruliness and, in solely human quality: it questions dominant
some cases, resistance to human intentions. definitions of agency, acknowledges the
agency of non-human actors, and displaces or exchange across networks to understanding

undermines the concepts of rationality, con- the processes through which socionatural
sciousness and will assumed to be unique to networks are generated and maintained
humans and upon which definitions of agency over time. If nothing else, resource geogra-
are often predicated. phy has demonstrated how the processes
To denaturalize agency is effectively to of translation (and subsequent purification)
redistribute it away from human agents. Yet that produce resources are far from random:
there is a tension within work on materiality resource flows (including the negative
over precisely what such redistribution resources of pollution) are highly structured
entails. Some accounts notably those in space and time. Yet, whereas earlier
stressing the agency of nature have sought accounts treated the resource as a passive
to denaturalize agency as a property of terrain carved and channelled by social
human subjects by admitting a wider range of agents, we argue that recent work on
potential agents (by giving standing to non- materiality enables a decentering of agency
humans as subjects, analogous to Stones through which resource geographies can
(1972) proposal regarding the extension of better express the generative capacities of
legal rights from human subjects to natural biophysical processes, without either
objects). This work enlarges the class of having to appeal to the agency of an external
agents but still rests on a conceptualization nature or rendering agency a function of a
of agency as the other of structure. The lack of knowledge or control. The production
term agency implies, in this reading, that we of nature, in other words, becomes recast
have imperfect knowledge and/or incomplete as a coproduction of socionature in which
control: nature surprises us, thwarts our humans and non-humans alike participate
plans, and evolves in unexpected ways. From (albeit unevenly, and subject to dynamic and
this perspective, the agency of nature debate evolving constraints).
can be seen as an artifact of our incomplete Rethinking natures agency similarly implies
understandings and representations of nature: a reworking of concepts of social con-
it is only possible to speak of the agency of structionism. No longer should construction
nature by simultaneously mobilizing (and represent, in Butlers (1993) phrase, the can-
reaffirming) two dualisms (nature/society; cellation of the natural by the social. Such a
agency/structure). This redistribution of view of construction even one shorn of its
agency to a broader class of subjects stands in more extreme modalities where the natural
contrast to the ontological reworking of is merely effaced by the social will not do.
agency within actor-network approaches to As Butler argues in Bodies that matter (1993),
hybridity (Whatmore, 2002). These sever we need to understand construction in the
agency from the subject-object binary by context of corporeality (what does it mean to
understanding agency in relational terms: say matter is constructed through discourse?
agency becomes an emergent property of how does doing become being?), and from
network associations rather than a property this to inquire whether materiality implies
inherent in discrete entities. necessity. Butler argues that to acknowl-
The analytical challenge for resource edge the inevitability of the act of construc-
geography, we suggest, is to preserve this tion does not imply an acceptance of the
emergent and decentered conceptualization inevitability of specific constructions of
of agency (as it proves particularly capable nature, the body, the self. Butlers argument,
for capturing the interpenetration of people therefore, is for the productive possibilities
and things so characteristic of resource and of construction understood as constitutive
environmental questions)6 while moving from constraint. Reconceptualizing construction
sketching topologies of connection and in this way enables Butler to shake loose the
materiality of sex from its stability (and social socially constructed nature of drought
power) as an apparently prediscursive fact impacts; and defines drought not as a natural
(considered as the biology around which hazard but as a natural climatic feature, the
cultures of gender are constructed) and impacts of which are mediated by social
allow sex itself to emerge as a regulatory processes (such as agricultural practices) and
ideal (Butler, 1993, following Foucault, 1978). economic factors (such as terms of trade).
To Butler, sex is part of a regulatory practice Accordingly, the Australian governments
that constructs and in many cases forcibly, drought policy emphasizes self-reliance and
violently the body it governs; a body that, risk management rather than emergency
nonetheless, often contests and fails to relief (Drought Policy Review Task Force,
comply with the norms by which its materi- 1990; Botterill, 2003), raising the ire of rural
ality is governed. Feminists following Butlers and farming communities a reflection of
approach to non-innocent topographies how the myth of drought is linked to, and
(Katz, 2001) thus begin from the assumption arises from, Australian notions of community
of the mutual constitutiveness of sex/gender, and identity (Day, 1987) and emblematic of
enacted and (imperfectly) produced and the political controversies which may be
governed through highly regulated practices ignited by an assertion of the interpenetration
which inevitably enact a violence through of the natural and the social.
their regulatory orderings. Flowing from this
analysis is an imperative empirically to disrupt V Conclusions
the sex/gender binary and the biological Human geographers have increasingly
essentialism to which it often gives rise. deployed concepts with which to express
This reworking of social constructionism is the physicality and copresence of the non-
a similar strategy to that adopted by those human both animate and inanimate within
who seek to disrupt the natural/social binary, conventional human worlds. These invoca-
and to refute conventional claims about tions stem in part from the recognition that
causality of natural or social processes. geographical inquiry has often failed to
Thus, political economists venturing into interrogate nature (and its analogue, the
ecology have sought to refute natures limits, environment) or treated it reductively (see, for
and demonstrate how these apparent limits example, Hanson, 1999). The anthropocen-
are, in fact, socionatural constraints (Harvey, trism of much writing on nature is not limited
1974; Lipietz, 1992; OConnor, 1998). For to geography, but, as Castree notes in a recent
example, analyses of droughts have demon- review, it is particularly troubling to those
strated that water scarcity is not absolute, but geographers who feel that naturesociety issues
relative an intersection of multiple socio- are (or ought to be) central to disciplinary
natural factors: meteorological variability; the identity (Castree, 2002b).
social construction of scientific knowledge We have argued in this paper that recent
of climate, demand and consumer behav- work on materiality opens up some interest-
iour; and political economic restructuring ing new avenues for research on resources,
of water supply systems (Nevarez, 1996; and enables one to move beyond rather tired
Bakker, 2000). This has important impli- debates about the production of or social
cations for resource management policy; if construction of nature. Research on material
drought is co-produced, to use Jasanoff s cultures and commodities, for example, sug-
(2004) term, then responses to drought must gests how one might consider questions of
involve a reworking of perceptions of nature consumption and production simultaneously,
and socio-economic practices not without, thereby extending the conventional (and
we should add, much contestation. For exam- sometimes myopic) focus of resource geogra-
ple, Australian drought policy recognizes the phies on production. Work on embodiment
offers new approaches to analysing the is an effort to problematize the social pro-
shaping of social relations by material condi- duction of knowledge. Appeals to materiality,
tions, without falling prey to environmental then, can be part of an anti-colonial project,
or biological determinism. The decentering if colonization is conceived broadly as the
of agency upon which this approach rests also reiteration of Latours modern Constitution,
underpins work on hybrids, where new whereby dualisms nature/culture, male/
approaches to the subject/object binary sug- female, mind/body, self/other are (imper-
gest ways to transcend the nature/society fectly) distilled from within a highly differ-
divide that has characterized much research entiated world. In this sense, a turn to the
on the geographies of resources. material can play a central role in efforts to
Our appeal to materiality is, in part, a call decolonize the social sciences. Consideration
for a research agenda that addresses the ana- of societys materiality and natures socializa-
lytical significance of concrete differences in tion provides an empirical grounding from
the material world and the way these enable which to question the adequacy of dualistic
and constrain the social relations necessary accounts (look, this is neither nature nor cul-
for resource production (as outlined above). ture nor has it ever been!). In other words,
But it is also an explicitly discursive strategy, deploying concepts of materiality to inter-
a call for a broader anti-colonial project rogate nature deepens our reflexivity about
within geography which seeks to destabilize ourselves.
the discourses and practices through which We think there is much to be gained,
are constituted the materiality of others therefore, in teasing out the analytical
whether these others be human, animate significance of concrete differences in terms
non-human, or material objects. Ecological of the biophysical properties of the material
economists or resource geographers, for world. These material differences are signif-
example, may undermine conventional tales icant because they enable and constrain
of resource exploitation through exploring the social relations necessary for resource
how biophysical characteristics of specific production. Materiality matters, then,
resources disrupt hegemonic models of capital because of the way its heterogeneity differen-
accumulation. This echoes work in feminist tially enables, constrains and/or disrupts the
and gender studies, which have focused on to social practices through which resource
the materiality of the (female) body as a regulation is achieved. In contrast to much of
means of destabilizing and interrupting patri- the historical materialist and commodity
archal representations, and of undercutting chain analysis discussed above, however, it is
hegemonic models predicated on the important to assert that the unruliness of
mind/body dualism. materiality should not be located in natural
Deploying materiality, then, can be viewed laws or limits. Rather, the critical issue and a
as situated strategy or what Adrienne fruitful focus for research is the way in
Rich terms a politics of location (Rich, which contemporary materialities have been
1986; Punday, 1998). Richs understanding produced historically, and the ways in which
of location is, of course, both metaphysical we can think imaginatively about creating
and concrete. Matter matters because it is new natures as possible futures (Smith,
through grounded research that we encounter 1984; Cheah, 1996).
differences that make a difference. By insert-
ing materiality into our analyses, we situate Acknowledgements
ourselves: resistant to binaries, suspicious of Trevor Barnes, Noel Castree, Matthew
master narratives, and plagued with dualisms. Gandy and Scott Prudham provided helpful
Common to the different conceptions and comments on a much earlier draft version of
usages of materiality across human geography this paper. We gratefully acknowledge the
insightful contributions of Bruce Braun, 6. As illustrated by Latours (1993) choice of

Margaret FitzSimmons, Cindi Katz and Paul resource and environmental questions for
Robbins who participated as panellists in the the opening of We have never been modern,
Material Worlds session at the Annual examples which he uses to demonstrate the
practice of translation.
Meeting of the Association of American
Geographers in New Orleans (March 2003). References
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Notes
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Prize-winning inquiry into the origins of Review 194, 5574.
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differences in environmental resources avail- matter: matter out of place public understandings of
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ences in geography and climate (Landes, 1998). Lilley, S., Listerborn, C., Marshy, M.,
Not to be missed is Landes introductory McEwan, S., OConnor, N., Rose, G., Vivat, B.
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Progress in Human Geography 30, 1 (2006) pp.

Material worlds? Resource geographies

Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK

I Introduction material and the social intertwine and

*Author for correspondence. Email: [email protected]

2006 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd 10.1191/0309132506ph588oa

of a politically engaged human geography. materiality is readily conflated with the

as external, revealed through science), the commonsense naturalism with which

for example, effectively deterritorializes Mitchell, 2004) produces an account that

agency of non-human actors, and displaces or exchange across networks to understanding

insightful contributions of Bruce Braun, 6. As illustrated by Latours (1993) choice of

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