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Tolia-Kelly, D.P. (2013) 'The geographies of cultural geography III : material geographies, vibrant matters and
risking surface geographies.', Progress in human geography., 37 (1). pp. 153-160.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0309132512439154
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The Geographies of Cultural Geography III: Material Geographies, Vibrant Matters
and Risking Surface Geographies.
Dr. Divya P. Tolia-Kelly.
ABSTRACT: The doing of material geographies within the sub-discipline of cultural geography has
been inspired by Jane Bennett’s account of Vibrant Matter. This review follows the various
trajectories in published research in the field of material geographies and argues that scholars
should aim to embrace the call of matter to think politically and beyond the surface. The review
argues that there is a risk of doing ‘surface geographies’ where research reflects matters at play
rather than evaluate the interconnectivity and co-constitution of materialities and their geographies.
KEY WORDS: vibrant materialism, surface geographies, materiality, geography, politics.
Stephen Daniels, the conference chair of the 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of
British Geographers) annual conference, has argued that “(T) he ‘Geographical Imagination’ has the
metaphorical capacity to refigure a larger conceptual field, to bring material and mental worlds into
closer conjunction” (Daniels, 2011). Daniels encapsulates the continuing inspiration for new research
and (for others) exposes the manifold tensions within the published research on material
geographies. In this, my final review, my focus will be on the work within the realms of material
geographies. I undertake this review in a context where the material parameters of the discipline are
also shifting (Phillips, 2011). As a result of the capacities of the geographical conceptual realm, there
are several moments where there has been a surge towards a notion of ‘new’ materialisms and
orientations. Occasionally, the promise of the imagination within the research process, to refigure
the worldly, materialises, whereas in other accounts, there is simply only a shallow engagement
presented. This is where the political engagement with the concept of material is absent; this is what
I term a surface geography. In these research projects, there is use of the concept of ‘materiality’,
but without any reflection, critique, engagement or evaluation; leaving a surface recording, a
description, a mapping or illustration of materialities within a site or those which are observed.
Material Research or Surface Geographies?
On reading the publications in this field, I have been drawn towards the conceptual question of
‘what makes these material geographies and not surface geographies? A true engagement with the
material In my review surface geographies locate themselves at the outer-edge, the surface film
rather than engage with the questions or politics of what is at stake materially. Surface geographies
risk delivering a visual collage of what is observed rather than considered through theories of the
material, politics, affects or effects. Citing examples of a ‘surface geography’ approach would be an
easy way of narrating, but given my polite respect and abhorrence of unscholarly reductionist
‘judgements’ in published reviews I would prefer to show how a good account of materiality
emerges in a researchers approach. Hetherington (1997) is an exemplary scholar who engages with
the material, and who also gives us a full account of his practice. The result is a published account of
research which embodies a clear politics of ‘doing’ materiality, but also provides a transparent
account of research practice.
“My aim is to bring materiality back in, and to see places generated by the placing, arranging and
naming, the spatial order of materials and the systems of difference that they perform.” (p15)
What Hetherington argues here is that materials are live, active, agentic and powerful. His first step
is to acknowledge their ‘place’, their ‘arrangement’, and their ‘names’. The second step is to
consider their spatial ‘orderings’; to evaluate hierarchies, patterns, and significations. And the third
step is to unravel their ‘performance’, their role, their effect and indeed any marked absences.
Hetherington is not content with simply describing the materials in their place, or producing a tally
of actors in this scene. Heatherington, moves beyond the surface of matter, to engage with the
politics, grammars and productive power of materials that are in place, shaping place and effectively
making a difference to place and the place of each other.
Vibrant Materialisms
Vibrant Matters (Bennett, 2010) has been foundational for recent expansion in research on
materiality. At the same time, the politics and philosophies of Jane Bennett have proven to be
philosophically inspiring. Bennett marks a moment where there is a shift change in research on the
cultural geographies of materiality which seems energised by her seam of rich narrative which
animates our assumptions about the inanimate, and much more (see Bennett, forthcoming). In
some accounts of published research within the field of material geographies, Bennett’s call of going
beyond the surface, is naively hollowed out in research practice, resulting in shallow iterations,
descriptions and accounts of the material both conceptually and empirically. Bennett argues that
‘materiality is a rubric that tends to horizontalise the relations between humans, biota and abiota’
(p112). So rather than stratified frameworks of thinking about the material; be they horizontal or
vertical, materials, as in Hetherington’s account, are active and co-constitutive of their geographies,
places, sites and spaces. This approach promotes ‘vital materialisms’, where humans and non-
humans alike are material configurations, not dividable, separate or separable, but integrated, co-
constituted and co-dependent. Bennett herself, accepts that her theoretical account of ‘thing-
power’ could be used to exemplify Adorno’s (1973) point about how ‘Western Philosophy, a
tradition that has consistently failed to mind the gap between concept, and reality, object and thing’
(p12). Bennett’s response is to prioritise; the ‘ethical task at hand here is to cultivate the ability to
discern non-human vitality, to become perceptually open to it’ (p14). The power of matter and the
seductive nature of materiality as a philosophical and political research orientation are presented
here. The geographies of material geographies are reviewed through a topological lens, which seeks
to understand materiality within an historicised, theoretical account where the risks of doing surface
geographies, remain within sight.
A third exemplary publication on material geographies, and one of the most impressive and radical
engagements with vibrant materialisms is Gibson-Graham’s (2011) paper ‘A feminist project of
belonging for the Anthropocene’. Their intervention here is aimed at thinking regional geography
with ethical and environmentalist politics which focuses on living differently with others on the
earth, in practice. Here, Gibson-Graham promotes thinking holistically about interdependencies that
can forge sustainable ethical communities which have geographical engagements focused on well-
being and happiness rather than economic growth and targets. Following Bennett’s Vibrant Matter
(2010) they are inspired to undertake ‘the ethical act of subsuming ourselves within others’ as well
as our own materiality and tuning into the dynamism that does not originate in human action’ (p2).
At the heart of their account they aim is to actively connect, methodologically, philosophically,
pragmatically, rather than see and iterate material connections. A different mode of humanity is
embraced here, from the modern accounts of ‘man’ we turn against an ‘illusory sense of autonomy’
(p3) towards an interdependent, human-centred process-of becoming and belonging. The
materiality of living, creating and politics is emergent, non-hierarchical and post human. The
important aspect of materialism for these authors is a possibility for political change and reimagining
of a complex of living that is situated in resolving human and non-human violence, alienation,
resource-poverty and environmental desertification of the seas and land. Temporal and spatial
scales shift within this use of the geological unit of the Anthropocene, which promotes a framework
that is challenging to our usual understanding of capital, materials, life and politics. This is a vitalised
account of geographies of materiality and material geographies, historically narrating the now
familiar cultural politics of landscape, social representation and nation.
Material Geographies
Genealogically, material geographies are rooted in Raymond Williams’s (1958; 1973) cultural
materialism and the philosophies of Stuart Hall. Since Jackson’s (2000) call to ‘re-materialise’ cultural
geography, there has been an increase in the numbers of scholars turning towards matter and
materiality (see Cook and Tolia-Kelly, 2010; Gregson et al, 2010; Hicks and Beaudry, 2010; Jayne et
al, 2010) reflecting a politics of attending to the material (Anderson and Tolia-Kelly, 2004; Clarke et
al. 2008; Crang and Tolia-Kelly, 2010; Miller, 1998). Opportunities for new political and philosophical
manifestos have ensued (see Anderson and Wylie, 2009; Gregson and Crang, 2010; Rose and Tolia-