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Material Politics
Disputes Along the Pipeline

‘Material Politics offers something new and original to our understanding of the global oil and gas industry. Barry locates his study of pipelines at the theoretic intersection of critical science studies, forms of rule, and the materiality of resources. He brilliantly exposes the complex controversies produced by actors and agents across the industry’s value-chain, and what they say about how we think about democracy and capitalism.’
—Michael Watts, Class of 1963 Professor of Geography, University of California, Berkeley

In this strong and daring book, Andrew Barry compellingly shows that it is a daunting task to govern the materials that make up a transnational oil pipeline, that the production of information made to foster transparency and calm may fuel ever more controversies, and that materials are not in themselves political, but may well become so.
—Annemarie Mol, Professor of Anthropology of the Body, University of Amsterdam.

Andrew Barry (Author)

9781118529119, Wiley

Hardback, published 1 November 2013

258 pages
23.9 x 16.3 x 1.8 cm, 0.472 kg

“[Barry's] methods of inquiry, attention to detail, and brilliant accounts of the roles materials played in knowledge controversies are standout contributions to the field and challenge several of the assumptions of now-common disciplinary gestures to new materialisms.”  (Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 1 October 2014)

“Despite the presence of some very prominent and overcoded political actors in this project, such as global oil companies, NGOs, activists and national governments, Barry’s meticulous attention to seemingly minor elements and complex relations displaces any recourse to easy reductionism. The usual suspects become part of a multitude of participants entangled in the project’s controversies, and their overt political capacities are often displaced or disabled by the performance of the most mundane things. In this analysis systemic patterns of causation are difficult to identify. Barry maps relational complexity with incredible skill, and the result is a sophisticated account of the contingencies of politics.”  (Contemporary Political Theory, 18 November 2014)

“Andrew Barry’s genius as a writer is that he teaches you something new about something that you thought you already knew.”  (Science & Technology Studies, 1 November 2014)

In Material Politics, author Andrew Barry reveals that as we are beginning to attend to the importance of materials in political life, materials has become increasingly bound up with the production of information about their performance, origins, and impact.

  • Presents an original theoretical approach to political geography by revealing the paradoxical relationship between materials and politics
  • Explores how political disputes have come to revolve not around objects in isolation, but objects that are entangled in ever growing quantities of information about their performance, origins, and impact
  • Studies the example of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline – a fascinating experiment in transparency and corporate social responsibility – and its wide-spread negative political impact
  • Capitalizes on the growing interdisciplinary interest, especially within geography and social theory, about the critical role of material artefacts in political life

Series Editors’ Preface viii

List of Figures and Tables ix

Acknowledgements x

Abbreviations xiii

1 Introduction 1

2 The Georgian Route: Between Political and Physical Geography 31

3 Transparency ’ s Witness 57

4 Ethical Performances 75

5 The Affected Public 95

6 Visible Impacts 116

7 Material Politics 137

8 Economy and the Archive 154

9 Conclusions 177

Notes 187

References 202

Index

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP]
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