Abstract
A fleeting glance at the compelling and eye-grabbing pictographic covers of Making Things International 1 and 2 might provoke a sense of consternation at what the overarching theme actually is for the volumes. The bricolage includes pathogens and cocaine alongside a traffic light, bicycle, burning car and even faeces, all resplendently stylized. The point is reinforced: again, the casual viewer would perhaps wonder what unifies all of these eclectic ‘things’. What does a F-35 fighter jet have to do with asbestos when it comes down to it? Why include some things as examples of ‘things’ and not others? These turn out to be questions less attentive commentators might pose. Editor Mark B. Salter makes a commendable effort at demystifying the selection process for the volumes and their covers: the ‘assemblage’ of the international is the binding theoretical disposition.
The term ‘international’ has become somewhat blasé in contemporary usage, doubtless due to the consistency of its use in institutional appellations. Notwithstanding its stultifying ubiquity, it is heartening to see the word’s revivification in these volumes, where the beguiling notion of ‘new materialism’ provides a welcomed nuance. It would be a misconstrual to presume that new materialism is simply code for post-modernism, and this would indeed miss the point entirely for this optic. As the volumes show through careful case studies, expressions of materialism are uncannily immaterial, and the term finds its hallmark in probing into meta-narratives about unique things, albeit in an itemized way. A renewed interest in materialist perspectives is at the heart of Making Things International, particularly through its assembly of an inventory that is surprising, informing, disturbing and ultimately noteworthy in its culmination of geographically relevant material.
Progress is certainly made in the volumes in pushing the boundary of actor-network theory (ANT) from its heyday in the 1990s. The volumes, however, do not conjure up the same kinds of intellectual questions as ANT, with its focus on social networks. There are two different platforms for the collections, organized around the cause célèbre of assemblage theory – an ontology retrofitted to these volumes’ gradation of new materialism and wholly in line with recent geographical forays by Durham University’s Ben Anderson and Colin McFarlane, amongst others. A highlight for me in Volume 1 is the sympathetic focus to the issue of international waste, most notable in UCL professor Michele Acuto’s contribution, whose iteration of assemblage in his chapter ‘Garbage’ should rightfully be understood as equally dis-assemblage, as is the chapter by University of Tennessee’s Jessica Auchter on ‘Corpses’. Similarly, Royal Holloway’s Peter Adey offers a more clandestine version of a ‘thing’, namely, the air we breathe and the political atmospheres of breath. Volume 2 continues this genre-busting with chapters on ‘secrets’ and ‘grey’ as well as further reflections on waste: dirt and shit.
One spectre the volumes confront is that of human progress, and even technological determinism. From the get go the volumes appear concerned with how material objects drive the development of institutions, cultures and values; statements taken at face value, such as Salter’s ‘[d]iplomacy is made by telegrams’, smack of reductionist thinking. Yet, to attempt to curtail the volumes’ contribution to geographical thinking in this manner deserves short shrift. The new materialist optic makes strides in pivoting off of materialist clichés, and there is neither evidence of materialism nor determinism, for that matter, in these collections. Indeed, the collections depart gracefully from what could have been a techno-centric accolade for human progress to a critical provocation of what constitutes international materiality.
The cogency of the arguments throughout the chapters intimates a close reading by the editor, and the impressive array of ‘things’ covered points to imagination and flair in the collection process. Just when technological determinism might be insinuated to be at play, a different ‘thing’ (of ‘worlds’ or ‘bodies’) appears that refutes such a reading of the collection. At the end of a full survey of the books the reader is left with a sense of saturation due to the sheer voluminousness of the enterprise. But then, it is indeed a lucid portrait of the incredible complexity of the systems of made objects moving and having a political impact internationally. Intricacy in this instance is a compliment to the ambition of the two books and should lead to lasting relevance and appreciation.