“Do you dive?”: Methodological considerations for engaging with “volume”

Abstract

The idea that we inhabit three dimensions is clearly not new, yet the explicit articulation of “volume” in recent literature has proved to be an extremely useful means through which to produce novel insights into the conduct and practice of geopolitics. Although the value of engaging with “volume” has been well established and taken discussions in new directions, yet the practicalities of doing this research are yet to be considered in great detail. How methodologically do we approach the three‐dimensional within political geography? Although this paper does not seek to outline a methodological framework, it draws on my own research to prompt discussion about the role of “immersive” methodologies in generating different perspectives within political geography. The paper ends by suggesting that a stronger interface between political geography and methodologies utilised in other geographical subdisciplines might be useful in producing novel insights into the earth's geopolitical volumes.

Terrain, politics, history

“…Anthony, 2018; Endfield and van Lieshout, 2020; Hawkins, 2020; Marston, 2019; Melo Zurita and Munro, 2019), but much has been focused on 20th century or contemporary political issues. These would include Andrew Harris (2015) on ‘vertical urbanism’, Donald McNeill’s (2019) recent work on ‘volumetric urbanism’ in Singapore, Rachael Squire (2016a, 2016b, 2017a, 2017b) in her work on Gibraltar and US undersea bases in the Cold War, Katherine Sammler (2019) on sea-level rise, Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall (2016) in work on the materiality of ice and the sea-bed, especially in the Arctic and Antarctic (also, see Bravo, 2019; Dodds, 2018, 2019), Johanne Bruun (2017, 2020) in her study of science and politics in Cold War Greenland, work on vertical structures and surfaces in cities (Mubi Brighenti and Kärrholm, 2018), a special issue of Geopolitics on Subterranean Geographies edited by Rachael Squire and Klaus Dodds (2020), 1 and in a dizzying sequence of papers produced for two online fora collated by Franck Billé for Cultural Anthropology and Society and Space (2018, 2019 ), leading to a significant book-length collection (2020). Harriet Hawkins and Billé have even called this work the ‘volumetric turn’ (Billé, 2020; Hawkins, 2019).…”

“…Andrew Harris (2015) stresses that we should look at non-militarised as well as militarised spaces from this perspective with respect to its materiality and dimensionality. Peter Adey (2013) and Rachael Squire (2017a) argue that we need to take the bodies in these spaces more seriously. Kimberley Peters and Jennifer Turner (2018) have further developed this idea in thinking about carceral geographies, and what they call a ‘politics of capacity’, of what fills these volumes (also, see Turner and Peters, 2017).…”

Ocean frontiers: epistemologies, jurisdictions, commodifications

“…Third, given the difficulties that arise from studying spaces out of sight, offshore, and beneath volumes of water (Peters et al . ; Squire ), the papers offer insights into methodological approaches for studying the oceans. Authors employ innovative approaches to attend to the matter of nature in their analyses, with several drawing out non‐human agency and the unruliness of ocean biologies and ecologies in the making of political and economic power.…”

Pipeline Geopolitics: Subaquatic Materials and the Tactical Point

“…We agree with the urban geographer Andrew Harris when he observes: "it is also important to recognize forms, landscapes and experiences, as well as their associated rationales and logics, that are not necessarily a fall-out from warfare doctrines and military technoscience" (Harris 2015, 604); in this light, we suggest that existing debates would benefit from being supplemented by perspectives from research on underground natural resources, including minerals, gas and oil (Kama 2013, Valdivia 2015. A second line of argument is that studies that attend to volume need to address the ways in which bodies experience, are affected by and 'immersed' in underground and undersea spaces (Squire 2017). Moreover, there is growing interest in the 'elemental' qualities of materials, pointing towards the possibility of a 'post-phenomenological' analysis of both atmosphere and the underground (McCormack 2016).…”

“…A series of recent publications have issued growing calls for geographical research that addresses the geopolitical significance of what has variously been termed 'volume' or 'verticality' (e.g. Elden 2013a, Adey 2013, Graham and Hewitt 2013, Graham 2016, Squire 2017. This injunction has both conceptual and empirical implications.…”