Political geographies of the object

Meehan, Katie; Shaw, Ian; Marston, Sallie A.

doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2012.11.002

Cited by 89 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Key for Actor Network Theory (ANT) scholars is that objects or things can be understood as "fully-fledged participants in diverse arrangements" (Hawkins, 2009: 184). Going further, object-orientated scholars focus on the force of objects in their own right (Meehan et al, 2013). 'New materialists' (see Coole and Frost, 2010) also pay attention to the political significance of the 'vitality of things' (Bennett, 2010), while stressing the 'morethan-human' formation of worlds (Whatmore, 2006).…”

Section: Deserted Belongings and The De/re-humanisation Of Migrants Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather than conceiving objects as discrete entities or as secondary to subjects, the emphasis of much of this scholarship is on the co-evolved nature of 'humans' and 'nonhumans'. Thus, such scholars recognize the world "…not [as] a slab of substance from which humans go about inventing objects", but instead approach objects and subjects as existing on the same ontological level and as differing only due to the effects of power (Meehan et al, 2013).…”

Section: Deserted Belongings and The De/re-humanisation Of Migrants Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Desert ‘trash’: Posthumanism, border struggles, and humanitarian politics

Squire

2014

Political Geography

109

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full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the 'permanent WRAP url' above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: publications@warwick.ac.uk 1 ABSTRACT What is the political significance of humanitarian activist engagements with the discarded belongings of migrants? This article explores how bordering practices between states resonate with bordering practices between the human and nonhuman. It argues that attempts to transform 'desert/ed trash' into objects of value are nothing less than struggles over the very category of 'the human' itself. Focusing on humanitarian engagements with the objects that migrants leave behind across the Mexico-US Sonoran desert, it explores how the politics of human mobility involves the co-constitution of 'people', 'places' and 'things' in multiple ways. By contrast to a posthumanist analysis that emphasises the agency of material things based on a distinction between the human and the nonhuman, I draw on the work of Karen Barad in order to develop a 'more-thanhuman' account of the materialdiscursive un/becomings of subjects-objectsenvironments as more or less 'human'. This allows for an analysis of 'the human' as a political stake that is produced through struggles to de/value people, places and things, and that is thus subject to contestation as well as to processes of deand re-composition. The article assesses the various ways that humanitarian engagements contest processes of dehumanisation through the re-configuration of 'desert/ed trash'. Rather than emphasising re-humanisation, however, I highlight the importance of analysis and practice that rejects the lure of 'naïve humanism' and the problematic over-and under-investments of migrant and human agency that such an approach involves. This is important, the article concludes, in order that the multiplicity of ways by which 'the human' is made, unmade and remade is accounted for without assuming either the supremacy or the powerlessness of people.

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Section: Deserted Belongings and The De/re-humanisation Of Migrants Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Deserted Belongings and The De/re-humanisation Of Migrants Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Desert ‘trash’: Posthumanism, border struggles, and humanitarian politics

Squire

2014

Political Geography

109

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“…Such connections and alliances are fundamental to governing, enabling abstract intentions to be translated into practicable interventions achievable in particular places (see Li 2007;Cupples 2011). Recent contributions specifically attending to the role and agency of objects in political geography have brought increasing focus to the actual processes through which this translation occurs by attending to the ways and means through which actors and elements are brought into and held in relation (Rutland and Aylett 2008;Müeller 2012;Meehan, Shaw, and Marston 2013;Shaw and Meehan 2013;). Notwithstanding, there is still surprisingly little attention to the particularities of how this relating is achieved and maintained.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Configuring Urban Carbon Governance: Insights from Sydney, Australia

McGuirk

Bulkeley

Dowling

2015

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

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In the political geography of responses to climate change, and the governance of carbon more specifically, the urban has emerged as a strategic site. Although it is recognized that urban carbon governance occurs through diverse programs and projects-involving multiple actors and working through multiple sites, mechanisms, objects, and subjects-surprisingly little attention has been paid to the actual processes through which these diverse elements are drawn together and held together in the exercise of governing. These processes-termed configuration-remain underspecified. This article explores urban carbon governance interventions as relational configurations, excavating how their diverse elements-human, institutional, representational, and material-are assembled, drawn into relation, and held together in the exercise of governing. Through an analysis of two contrasting case studies of urban carbon governance interventions in Sydney, Australia, we draw out common processes of configuring and specific sets of devices and techniques that gather, align, and maintain the relations between actors and elements that constitute intervention projects. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of conceiving of governing projects as relational configurations for how we understand the nature and practice of urban carbon governance, especially by revealing the diverse modes of power at work within processes of configuring. AbstractIn the political geography of responses to climate change, and the governance of carbon more specifically, the urban has emerged as a strategic site. While it is recognised that urban carbon governance occurs through diverse programs and projects-involving multiple actors and working through multiple sites, mechanisms, objects and subjects-surprisingly little attention has been paid to the actual processes through which these diverse elements are drawn together and held together in the exercise of governing. These processestermed configuration -remain under-specified. This article explores urban carbon governance interventions as relational configurations, excavating how their diverse elements-human, institutional, representational, material-are assembled, drawn into relation and held together in the exercise of governing. Through an analysis of two contrasting case studies of urban carbon governance interventions in Sydney, Australia, we draw out common processes of configuring and specific sets of devices and techniques that gather, align and maintain the relations between actors and elements that constitute intervention projects. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of conceiving of governing projects as relational configurations for how we understand the nature and practice of urban carbon governance, especially by revealing the diverse modes of power at work within processes of configuring.

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“…Arguing that one or the other provides the ultimate analytical lens is unproductive. Some strive especially to illustrate nonhumans' agency in producing power effects (Mitchell, 2002;Holifield, 2009;Sundberg, 2011;Meehan et al, 2013), while critics claim their focus overlooks the role of existing, uneven social relations and the making of winners and losers (Castree, 2002;Kirsch and Mitchell, 2004;Lave 2015). And so, many in turn emphasize the operation of neoliberal, colonial, or other relations to explain and critique environmental change and conflict, but treat power as if it is apart from everyday objects which perform operations on the world (cf.…”

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confidence: 99%

Performing nature's value: software and the making of Oregon's ecosystem services markets

Nost

2015

Environ Plan A

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Geographers of technology illustrate software code's contexts, effects, and agencies as they shape urban space and everyday life, but the consequences of code for nature remain understudied. Political ecologists have critiqued remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) based conservation projects, but have not engaged more broadly with the role of software in the contested production, circulation, and application of ecological knowledge. Yet, around the world, data analytics firms and conservation nonprofits argue for optimizing environmental management through faster and bigger data collection and new techniques of data manipulation and visualization. I present a case study from the US state of Oregon, illustrating how conservationists and environmental regulators employ computer programming to plan markets in which entrepreneurs restore stream and wetland ecosystem services to earn offset credits. In these markets, code-executed algorithms constituting spreadsheets, web maps, and GIS utilities generate, relate, and make sense of the data that define credit commodities. I argue that code tends toward three effects: producing a landscape defined by wetlands' modeled value, performing social relations associated with nature's neoliberalization and financialization, and legitimating these moves. Although emphasis on the performativity of code and other technological objects is warranted, the contexts in which these are authored, deployed, and evaluated should remain central to understanding environmental governance. This is to caution against seeing technology as reducing nature and society to state or capitalist rationalities and to hesitate to differentiate prima facie code's work on space and on nature. I call for bridging political ecology and geographies of technology in ways that can explain how code is generative of environmental knowledge, change, and conflict.

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Political geographies of the object

Cited by 89 publications

References 32 publications

Desert ‘trash’: Posthumanism, border struggles, and humanitarian politics

Desert ‘trash’: Posthumanism, border struggles, and humanitarian politics

Configuring Urban Carbon Governance: Insights from Sydney, Australia

Performing nature's value: software and the making of Oregon's ecosystem services markets

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