Abstract
The authors of this book address a perennial philosophical question in the social sciences – does ‘being determine consciousness’ or does ‘consciousness determine being’? For materialist philosophers, thoughts and ideas of the world are the products of objective material reality. Frederick Engels drew attention to this perspective with his quip that when his friend Karl Marx synthesised the philosophical idealism of Hegel with the materialism of Feuerbach to produce dialectical materialism, ‘the dialectic of Hegel was turned over; or rather, turned off its head, on which it was standing, and placed upon its feet’ (Engels, 1886/1946). However, the post-structuralist ‘linguistic turn’ of the social sciences in the late 20th century can be interpreted as a return to philosophical idealism because it proposes that language (a product of the human mind) shapes our view of reality. Fox and Alldred do not argue for a return to 19th century materialism, but instead point to a synthesis between materialism and post-structuralism. That is to say, they argue for the materiality of discourse. They propose that, whilst ‘new materialisms’ have arisen as a reaction to the ‘textualization of the social world’, such approaches retain insights from post-structuralism on power, culture and social action but resist the reductionist materialism of classical sociology. In so doing, they adopt a ‘monist’ approach to ontology, reaching back as far as Spinoza, that rejects the opposing dualities that are frequently observed in the social sciences: ‘This monism removes a distinction between a ‘physical’ world of things and bodies and a realm of thoughts, social structures and cultural products (matter vs mind); between a ‘reality’ independent of human thought and the social constructs that humans produce to apprehend that reality, or even between animate and inanimate. At the same time, this monism opens up the possibility of multiplicity and diversity that exceeds and overwhelms the dualities it replaces’ (p 14)
What are the theoretical foundations of new materialism? Fox and Alldred identify four main sources of theory comprising the works of Latour (actor-network theory), Deleuze and Guattari (microphysics of social production), Barad (materialist onto-epistemology) and Braidotti (posthumanism). Taken together, these sources point to the development of a set of propositions for a new materialist sociology that consist of a focus on matter (there is nothing inside or outside matter that makes it do what it does, a monist perspective that does not set concepts of ‘mind’ and ‘body’ in opposition); an exploration of what matter does, not what it is (materiality is plural and complex, uneven and contingent, relational and emergent); a view that human agency is not privileged (a shift away from anthropocentrism); thoughts, memories, desires and emotions have material effects (the physical and cultural assemble together to produce bodies, social formations and events); material forces act locally (power is seen not as something outside or beyond the flow of forces or affects in assemblages, but as this flow itself); and, the materiality of sociology (the researcher and the researched event, plus the many other relations involved in social inquiry such as the tools, technologies and theories of scientific research, should be seen in terms of relations within a research-assemblage productive of a variety of material capabilities in its human and non-human constituents).
This leads on to the concept of ‘assemblages’. What are they and how are they constituted? The authors remind us that the materialism of Deleuze and Guattari regards human bodies and all other material, social and abstract entities as relational, having no ontological status or integrity other than that produced through their relationship to other similarly contingent and ephemeral bodies, things and ideas. These contingent and ephemeral materialities gain substance and shape as they are drawn together into assemblages. Drawing on their own scholarship, Fox and Alldred cite the example of a sexuality assemblage which ‘accrues around an event such as an erotic kiss, which comprises not just two pairs of lips but also physiological processes, personal and cultural contexts, aspects of the setting, memories and experiences, sexual norms and codes of conduct, and potentially many other relations pertinent to that event’ (p 17). What holds assemblages together are the capacities of assembled relations to affect or to be affected. The flow of affect within assemblages can be physical, biological, psychological, social, political or emotional. ‘To the extent that a relation in an assemblage can affect or be affected, it may be understood as material, thus opening to materialist analysis a range of materialities that spans the physical (geological formations or genetics) to the expressive affects of human thoughts, beliefs, desires and feelings’ (p 18).
In a series of chapters, the authors outline how new materialism can be applied to the description and analysis of a wide variety of assemblages including the environment, society, creativity, sexuality, emotions and health. The final section of this book comprises a chapter that addresses designs, methods and the research assemblage, and a chapter on action, policy and change leading to ‘an engaged sociology of materiality’. Hence a materialist sociology should not only interpret the world in various ways – the point is to change it.
This book is described in the advertising matter on the back cover as ‘a one-stop guide for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates in sociology, cultural studies, social policy and related disciplines’. I would be inclined to extend this potential audience to include those enrolled on advanced courses of professional studies in education at Masters and Doctoral levels. This is an exciting book full of potential for readers of this journal. How might such perspectives, as outlined by Fox and Alldred, be applied to the ontologies and epistemologies of research into international schools and international education? Educational research methodologies could be invigorated with a dose of ‘new Materialism’. It would be of great interest to see what can be made of international schools and international education as assemblages. How might the next generation of international education researchers conceptualise the field armed with theoretical tools such as this?