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 acknowledgement 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.
Anderson, B. and Tolia-Kelly, D.2004: Matter(s) in social and cultural geography , Geoforum35, 669-674 .
2.
Appadurai A.1986: The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge University Press .
3.
Bakker, K.2000: Privatising water, producing scarcity: the Yorkshire drought of 1995 : Economic Geography76, 4-27 .
4.
Bakker, K.2004: An uncooperative commodity: privatizing water in England and Wales. Oxford University Press .
5.
Barnes, T. and Duncan, J. , editors 1992: Writing worlds: discourse, text and metaphor in the representation of landscape. Routledge .
6.
Baudrillard J.1990: Fatal strategies. Pluto .
7.
Baudrillard J.1993: Symbolic exchange and death. Sage .
8.
Bell, D. and Valentine, G. , editors 1995: Mapping desire: geographies of sexualities. Routledge .
9.
Benton, T.1992: Ecology, socialism, and the mastery of nature: a reply to Reiner Grundmann . New Left Review194, 55-74 .
10.
Bickerstaff, K. and Walker, G.2003: The place of matter: matter out of place - public understandings of air pollution . Progress in Human Geography27, 45-68 .
11.
Blaikie, P.1999: A review of political ecology . Zeitschrift fur Wirtschaftsgeographie.
12.
Bondi, L. , Avis, H. , Bingley, A. , Davidson, J. , Duffy, R. , Einagel, V. , Green, A.-M. , Johnston, L. , Lilley, S. , Listerborn, C. , Marshy, M. , McEwan, S. , O'Connor, N. , Rose, G. , Vivat, B. and Wood, N.2002: Subjectivities, knowledges and feminist geographies. Rowman and Littlefield .
13.
Botterill, J.C.2003: Uncertain climate: the recent history of drought policy in Australia . Australian Journal of Politics and History49, 61-74 .
14.
Boyd, W. , Prudham, S. and Schurmann, R.2001: Industrial dynamics and the problem of nature . Society and Natural Resources14, 555-570 .
15.
Braun, B.1997: Buried epistemologies: the politics of nature in (post) colonial British Columbia . Annals of the Association of American Geographers87, 3-31 .
16.
Braun, B.2002: The intemperate rainforest: nature, culture and power on Canada's west coast. University of Minnesota Press .
17.
Braun, B. and Castree, N. , editors 1998: Remaking reality: nature at the millennium. Routledge .
18.
Brechin, G.1999: Imperial San Francisco: urban power, earthly ruin. University of California Press .
19.
Bridge, G.2000: The social regulation of resource access and environmental impact: production, nature and contradiction in the U .S. copper industry. Geoforum31, 237-256 .
20.
Bridge, G.2001: Resource triumphalism: postindustrial narratives of primary commodity production . Environment and Planning A33, 2149-2173 .
21.
Bridge, G. and Smith, A.2003: Intimate encounters: culture-economy-commodity . Environment and Planning D: Society and Space21, 257-268 .
22.
Butler, J.1993: Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of `sex'. Routledge .
23.
Callard, F.1998: The body in theory . Society and Space16, 387-400 .
24.
Castree, N.1995: The nature of produced nature: materiality and knowledge construction in Marxism . Antipode27, 13-48 .
25.
Castree, N.1997: Nature, economy and the cultural politics of theory: the `War against the Seals' in the Bering Sea, 1870-1911 . Geoforum28, 1-20 .
26.
Castree, N.2001: Commentary: commodity fetishism, geographical imaginations and imaginative geographies . Environment and PlanningA 33, 1519-1525 .
Chiras, D. , Regnold, J. and Owen, O.2002: Natural resource conservation: management for a sustainable future. Prentice Hall .
34.
Chouinard, V.1999: Being out of place: disabled women's explorations of ableist spaces. In Teather, E. , editor, Embodied geographies: spaces, bodies and rites of passage, Routledge .
35.
Chouinard, V.2002: Disability and geography . In Baltes, P. and Smelser, N., editors, International encyclopedia of the Social Sciences6, 3700-3704 .
36.
Cohen, L.1997: Glass, paper, beans: revelations on the nature and the value of ordinary things. Doubleday .
37.
Cook, I.2004: Follow the thing . Antipode36, 642-664 .
38.
Cook, I. and Crang, P.1996: The world on a plate: culinary culture, displacement and geographical knowledges . Journal of Material Culture1, 131-153 .
39.
Crang, P.1996: Displacement, consumption and identity . Environment and PlanningA 28, 47-67 .
40.
Crang, P. , Dwyer, C. and Jackson, P.2003: Transnationalism and the space of commodity culture . Progress in Human Geography27, 438-456 .
41.
Crewe, L.2000: Geographies of retailing and consumption . Progress in Human Geography24, 275-290 .
42.
Cronon, W.1991: Nature's metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. Norton .
43.
Cutter, S. , Renwick, H. and Renwick, W.1991: Exploitation, conservation, preservation: a geographical perspective on natural resource use. Wiley .
44.
Day, D.1987: An Australian perspective on drought and water management objectives for regional development . Water Resources Development3, 267-283 .
45.
Delaney, D.2001: Making nature/marking humans: law as a site of (cultural) production . Annals of the Association of American Geographers91, 487-503 .
46.
Demeritt, D.2002: What is the `social construction of nature'? A typology and sympathetic critique . Progress in Human Geography26, 767-790 .
47.
Descola, P. and Pálssen, G. , editors 1996: Nature and society. Anthropological perspectives. Routledge .
48.
Diamond, J.1997: Guns, germs, and steel: the fates of human societies. WW Norton .
49.
Drought Policy Review Task Force1990: National drought policy. Australian Government Publishing Service .
50.
Drummond, I. and Marsden, T.K.1995: Regulating sustainable development . Global Environmental Change5, 51-64 .
51.
Duncan, N. , editor 1996: Body space: destabilizing geographies of gender and sexuality. Routledge .
52.
Dyck, I.1998: Women with disabilities and everyday geographies: home space and the contested body. In Kearns, R.A. and Gesler, W.M. , editors, Putting health into place: landscapes, identity, and well-being, Syracuse University Press .
53.
Dyck, I.2003: Feminism and health geography: twin tracks or divergent agendas?Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography10, 361-368 .
54.
Elias, M. and Carney, J.2004: The female commodity chain of shea butter: Burkinabe producers, western green consumers and fair trade . Cahiers de Geographie du Quebec48(133), 71-88 .
55.
Escobar, A.1999: After nature: steps to an antiessentialist political ecology . Current Anthropology40, 1-30 .
56.
Evernden, N.1992: The social creation of nature. Johns Hopkins University Press .
57.
Fine, B.1994: Towards a political economy of food . Review of International Political Economy1, 519-545 .
58.
Fine, B. , Heasman M. and Wright, J.1996: Consumption in the age of affluence: the world of food. Routledge .
59.
FitzSimmons, M.1989: The matter of nature . Antipode21, 106-120 .
60.
FitzSimmons, M. 2003: Commentary . Material Worlds Panel Session, Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, New Orleans, March.
61.
Forsyth, T.2002: Critical political ecology: the politics of environmental science. Routledge .
62.
Foucault, M.1978: The history of sexuality, Volume 1. Vintage Books .
63.
Freidberg, S.2004: French beans and food scares: culture and commerce in an anxious age. Oxford University Press .
64.
Fuller, S.2000: Why science studies has never been critical of science: some recent lessons on how to be a helpful nuisance and a harmless radical . Philosophy of the Social Sciences30, 5-32 .
65.
Gandy, M.1997: The making of a regulatory crisis: restructuring New York's water supply . Transactions of the Institute of British GeographersNS 22, 338-358 .
66.
Gandy, M.2002: Concrete and clay: reworking nature in New York City. MIT Press .
67.
Gately, I.2003: Tobacco: a cultural history of how an exotic plant seduced civilization. Groves Press .
68.
Gibbs, D.1996: Integrating sustainable development and economic restructuring: a role for regulation theory?Geoforum27, 1-10 .
69.
Gibbs, D.2000: Ecological modernisation, regional economic development and regional development agencies . Geoforum31, 9-19 .
70.
Gibbs, D. , Jonas, A. and While, A.2002: Changing governance structures and the environment: environment-economic relations at the local and regional scale . Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning4, 123-138 .
71.
Goodman, D. , Sorj, B. and Wilkinson, J.1987: From farming to biotechnology: a theory of agro-industrial development. Blackwell .
72.
Graves-Brown, P. , editor 2000: Matter, materiality and modern culture. Routledge .
73.
Gregory, D.2001: Postcolonialism and the production of nature, In Castree, N. and Braun, B. , editors, Social nature, Blackwell .
74.
Grosz, E.1992: Bodies/cities. In Colomina, B. , editor, Sexuality and space, Princeton Architectural Press , 241-254.
75.
Grosz, E.1994: Volatile bodies: towards a corporeal feminism. Indiana University Press .
76.
Gunderson, L. and Holling, B.2002: Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press .
77.
Gururani, S.2002: Forests of pleasure and pain: Gendered practices of labor and livelihood in the forests of the Kumaon Himalayas . Gender Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography9, 229-243 .
78.
Guthman, J.2004: Agrarian dreams? the paradox of organic farming in California. University of California Press .
79.
Gwynne, R.N.1999: Globalisation, commodity chains and fruit exporting regions in Chile . Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie90, 211-225 .
80.
Hacking, I.1999: The social construction of what?Harvard University Press .
81.
Hanson, S.1999: `Isms and schisms: healing the rift Between the Nature Society and the Space Society traditions in human geography . Annals of the Association of American Geographers89, 133-143 .
82.
Haraway, D.1991: Simians, cyborgs, and women: the reinvention of nature. Free Association Books .
83.
Haraway, D. 1997: Modest_witness@second_millennium.female-man_meets_oncomouse: feminism and technoscience. Routledge.
84.
Harrison, P.2000: Making sense: embodiment and the sensibilities of the everyday . Environment and Planning D: Society and Space18, 497-517 .
85.
Hartwick, E.1998: Geographies of consumption: a commodity chain approach . Society and Space16, 423-437 .
86.
Hartwick, E.2000: Towards a geographical politics of consumption . Environment and Planning A32, 1177-1192 .
87.
Harvey, D.1974: Population, resources and the ideology of science . Economic Geography50, 256-276 .
88.
Harvey, D.1998: The body as an accumulation strategy . Society and Space16, 401-421 .
89.
Harvey, D.2000: Spaces of hope. University of California Press .
90.
Hayles, N.K.1993: The materiality of informatics . Configurations: A Journal of Literature and Science1, 147-170 .
91.
Hayward, J.D. and Le Heron, R.B.2002: Horticultural reform in the European Union and New Zealand: further developments towards a global fresh fruit and vegetable complex . Australian Geographer33, 9-27 .
92.
Henderson, G.1998: California and the fictions of capital. University of California Press .
93.
Holechek, J. , Cole, R. , Fisher, J. and Valdez, R.2000: Natural resources: ecology, economics and policy. Prentice Hall .
Hughes, A.2000: Retailers, knowledges and changing commodity networks: the case of the cut flower trade . Geoforum31, 175-190 .
96.
Hughes, A. and Reimer, S. , editors 2003: Geographies of commodity chains. Pearson .
97.
Hyams, M.2003: Adolescent Latina bodyspaces: making homegirls, homebodies and homeplaces . Antipode35, 536-558 .
98.
Imrie, R.1996: Ableist geographies, disablist spaces: towards a reconstruction of Golledge's `Geography and the disabled' . Transactions of the Institute of British GeographersNS 21, 397-403 .
99.
Imrie, R.2003: Architects' conceptions of the human body . Society and Space21, 47-65 .
100.
Ingold, T.1986: The appropriation of nature: essays on human ecology and social relations. Manchester University Press .
101.
Jackson, P.1987: Race and racism: essays in social geography. Unwin .
102.
Jackson, P.1999: Commodity cultures: the traffic in things . Transactions of the Institute of British GeographersNS 24, 95-108 .
103.
Jackson, P.2000: Rematerializing social and cultural geography . Social and Cultural Geography1, 9-14 .
104.
Jackson, P.2002: Commercial cultures: transcending the cultural and the economic . Progress in Human Geography26, 3-18 .
105.
Jackson, P. and Holbrook, B.1995: Multiple meanings: shopping and the cultural politics of identity . Environment and Planning A27, 1913-1930 .
106.
Jasanoff, S. , editor 2004: States of knowledge: the co-production of science and social order. Routledge .
107.
Jonas, A. and Bridge, G.2003: Governing nature: the re-regulation of resources, land use planning, and nature conservation . Social Science Quarterly84, 958-962 .
108.
Katz, C.2001: On the grounds of globalization: a topography for feminist political engagement . Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society26, 1213-1234 .
109.
Kay, L.2000: Who wrote the book of life?Standford University Press .
110.
Kearnes, M.2003: Geographies that matter - the rhetorical depolyment of physicality?Social and Cultural Geography4, 139-152 .
111.
Kirsch, S. and Mitchell, D.2004: The nature of things: dead labor, nonhuman actors, and the persistence of Marxism . Antipode36, 687-705 .
112.
Kloppenburg, J.1988: First the seed: the political economy of plant biotechnology, 1492-2000. Cambridge University Press .
113.
Kurlansky, M.1997: Cod: a biography of the fish that changed the world. Penguin .
114.
Kurlansky, M.2002: Salt: a world history. Walker and Co.
115.
Landes, D.1998: The wealth and poverty of nations: why some are so rich and some so poor. W.W. Norton .
116.
Langton, C.1988: Artificial life. Addison-Wesley .
117.
Latham, A. and McCormack, D.P.2004: Moving cities: rethinking the materialities of urban geographies . Progress in Human Geography28, 701-724 .
118.
Latour, B.1993: We have never been modern. Harvard University Press .
119.
Latour, B.1999: On recalling ANT. In Law, J. and Hassard, J. , editors, Actor network theory and after, Blackwell , 15-25.
120.
Law, J.1994: Organizing modernity. Blackwell .
121.
Law, J. and Mol, A.1995: Notes on materiality and sociality . Sociological Review43, 274-294 .
122.
Le Billon, P.2001: The political ecology of war: natural resources and armed conflicts . Political Geography20, 561-584 .
123.
Le Billon, P.2006: Romancing the stone: blood diamonds and the terrorist consumer . Antipode, in press.
124.
Lees, L.2002: Rematerializing geography: the `new' urban geography . Progress in Human Geography26, 101-112 .
125.
Lefebvre, H.1991: The production of space. Blackwell .
126.
Le Heron, R. , Penny, G. , Paine, M. , Sheath, G. , Pedersen, J. and Botha, N.2001: Global supply chains and networking: a critical perspective on learning challenges in the New Zealand dairy and sheepmeat commodity chains . Journal of Economic Geography1, 439-456 .
127.
Leslie, D. and Reimer, S.1999: Spatializing commodity chains . Progress in Human Geography23, 401-420 .
128.
Light, J.1997: The changing nature of nature . Ecumene4, 181-195 .
129.
Linnros, H. and Hallin, P.2001: The discursive nature of environmental conflicts: the case of the Oresund link . Area33, 391-403 .
130.
Lipietz, A.1992: Towards a new economic order: postfordism, ecology and democracy. Polity Press .
131.
Little, J. and Leyshon, M.2003: Embodied rural geographies: developing research agendas . Progress in Human Geography27, 257-272 .
132.
Longhurst, R.2001: Geography and gender: looking back, looking forward . Progress in Human Geography25, 641-648 .
133.
Longhurst, R.2002: Geography and gender: a `critical' time?Progress in Human Geography26, 544-552 .
134.
Longhurst, R.1997: (Dis) embodied geographies . Progress in Human Geography21, 486-501 .
135.
MacLachlan, I.2001: Kill and chill: restructuring Canada's beef commodity chain. University of Toronto Press .
136.
Mann, S. and Dickinson, J.1978: Obstacles to the development of a capitalist agriculture . Journal of Peasant Studies5, 466-481 .
137.
Mansfield, B.2003: Spatializing globalization: a `geo-graphy of quality' in the seafood industry . Economic Geography79, 1-16 .
138.
Mather C.1999: Agro-commodity chains, market power and territory: re-regulating South African citrus exports in the 1990s . Geoforum30, 61-70 .
139.
Matless, D.2001: Bodies made of grass made of earthmade of bodies: organicism, diet and national health in mid-twentieth-century England . Journal of Historical Geography27, 355-376 .
140.
McDowell, L.1993: Space, place and gender relations: part II. Identity, difference, feminist geometries and geographies . Progress in Human Geography17, 305-318 .
141.
McKittrick, K.2000: `Who do you talk to, when a body's in trouble?': M. Nourbese Philip's (un)silencing of black bodies in the diaspora . Social and Cultural Geography1, 223-236 .
142.
Miller, D.1987: Material culture and mass consumption. Blackwell .
143.
Miller, D. , editor 1998: Material cultures: why some things matter. University of Chicago Press .
144.
Mintz, S.1985: Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern history. Penguin Putnam .
145.
Mitchell, B.1989: Geography and resource analysis. Longman .
146.
Moraga, C. and Anzaldua, G.1981: This bridge called my back. Persephone .
147.
Murdoch, J.1997: Inhuman/nonhuman/human . Environment and Planning D: Society and Space15, 731-756 .
148.
Myers, G.1990: Writing biology: texts in the social construction of scientific knowledge. University of Wisconsin Press .
149.
Nast, H. and Pile, S. , editors 1998: Places through the body. Routledge .
150.
Nelson, L.1999: Bodies (and spaces) do matter: the limits of performativity . Gender, Place and Culture6, 331-354 .
151.
Nesbitt, J. and Weiner, D.2001: Conflicting environmental imaginaries and the politics of nature in Central Appalachia . Geoforum32, 333-349 .
152.
Nevarez, L.1996: Just wait until there's a drought: mediating environmental crises for urban growth . Antipode28, 246-272 .
O'Connor, J.1998: Natural causes: essays in ecological Marxism. Guilford .
155.
Parr, H.1998: Mental health, ethnography, and the body . Area30, 28-37 .
156.
Parr, H.2001: Feeling, reading and making bodies in space . Geographical Review91, 158-167 .
157.
Peet, R. and Watts, M. , editors 2004: Liberation ecologies: environment, development, social movements (second edition). Routledge .
158.
Peluso, N.1992: Rich forests, poor people: resource control and resistance in Java. University of California Press .
159.
Philo, C.2000: More words, more worlds: reflections on the cultural turn and human geography. In Cook, I. , Crouch, D. , Naylor, S. and Ryan, J. , editors, Cultural turns, geographical turns: perspectives on cultural geography, Prentice Hall : 26-53.
160.
Polanyi, K.1944: The great transformation. Farrar and Rinehart .
161.
Punday, D.1998: Theories of materiality and location . Genders27-27 (online journal). Retrieved 12 October 2005 from http://www.genders.org/lockss/genders/1998.html
162.
Rich, A.1986: Notes toward a politics of location. In Blood, bread, and poetry: selected prose 1979-1985, W.W. Norton , 215-216.
163.
Roberts, R. and Emel, J.1992: Uneven development and the tragedy of the commons: competing images for nature-society analysis . Economic Geography68, 249-271 .
164.
Robbins, P.2004: Political ecology: a critical introduction. Blackwell .
165.
Rocheleau, D. , Thomas-Slayter, B. and Wangari, E. , editors 1996: Feminist political ecology. Routledge .
166.
Rodaway, P.1994: Sensuous geographies: body, sense and place. Routledge .
167.
Rorty, R.1981: Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton University Press .
168.
Rose, G.1993: Feminism and geography: the limits of geographical knowledge. Polity Press .
169.
Ross, A.1994: The Chicago gangster theory of life: nature's debt to society. Verso .
170.
Russell, E.2003: Evolutionary history: prospectus for a new field . Environmental History8.2-8.2 . Retrieved 12 October 205 from http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/eh/8.2/russell.html>
171.
Schrepfer, S. and Scranton, P. , editors 2004: Industrializing organisms: introducing evolutionary history. Routledge .
172.
Serres, M.1985: Les cinq sens. Grasset .
173.
Shenk, T. and Franklin, A.2001: Modelling natural resource management: development, interpretation and analysis. Island Press .
174.
Silvey, R.2004: power, difference, and mobility: feminist advances in migration studies . Progress in Human Geography, 28, 1-17 .
175.
Smith, N.1984: Uneven development: nature, capital and the production of space. Blackwell .
176.
Smith, N.1996: The production of nature. In Robertson, G. , Mash, M. , Tichner, L. , Bird, J. , Curtis, B. and Putnam, T. , editors, Future natural, Routledge , 35-54.
177.
Soper, K.1995: What is nature?Blackwell .
178.
Stone, C.1972: Should trees have standing? Toward legal rights for natural objects. William Kaufmann Inc.
179.
Swyngedouw, E.1996: The city as hybrid: on nature, society and cyborg urbanization . Capitalism Nature Socialism7, 65-80 .
180.
Swyngedouw, E.1999: Modernity and hybridity: nature, Regeneracionismo, and the production of the Spanish waterscape, 1890-1930 : Annals of the Association of American Geographers89, 443-465 .
181.
Swyngedouw, E.2004: social power and the urbanization of water - flows of power. Oxford University Press .
182.
Teather, E. , editor 1999: Embodied geographies: spaces, bodies and rites of passage. Routledge .
183.
Terranova, T.1996: Post-human unbounded: artificial evolution and high-tech. In Robertson, G. , editor, Futurenatural, Routledge , 165-182.
184.
Thrift, N.1996: Spatial formations. Theory, Culture and Society Series. Sage .
185.
Valentine, G.1999: A corporeal geography of consumption . Society and Space17, 329-351 .
186.
Wark, M.1994: Third nature . Cultural Studies8, 115-132 .
187.
Watts, M.2000: Political ecology. In Barnes, T. and Sheppard, E. , editors, A companion to economic geography, Blackwell .
188.
Wescoat, J.1991: Resource management: the long-term global trend . Progress in Human Geography15, 81-81 .
189.
Wescoat, J.1992: Resource management: oil resources and the Gulf conflict . Progress in Human Geography16, 243-256 .
190.
Wescoat, J.1993: Resource management: UNCED, GATT, and global change . Progress in Human Geography17, 232-240 .
191.
Whatmore, S.1999: Hybrid geographies: rethinking the human in human geography. In Massey, D. , Allen, J. and Sarre, P. , editors, Human geography today, Polity Press , 24-39.
White, G.F.1945: Human adjustment to floods: a geographical approach to the flood problem in the United States. Department of Geography, University of Chicago .
194.
Wolch, J. and Emel, J.1998: Animal geographies: place, politics and identity in the nature-culture borderlands. Verso .
195.
Worster, D.1985: Rivers of empire: water, aridity and the growth of the American West. Oxford University Press .
196.
Zimmerer, K.S.1993: Soil erosion and social (dis) courses in Cochabamba, Bolivia: perceiving the nature of environmental degradation . Economic Geography69, 312-328 .
197.
Zimmerer, K.S.2000: The reworking of conservation geographies: non-equilibrium landscapes and nature-society hybrids . Annals of the Association of American Geographers90, 356-369 .
198.
Zimmerman, E.W.1933: World resources and industries: a functional appraisal of the availability of agricultural and industrial resources. Harper and Brothers .
199.
Zuckerman, L.1999: The potato: how the humble spud rescued the western world. North Point Press .
