Political materials: rethinking environment, remaking theory

Abstract

This paper introduces the special issue ‘Political Materials: Rethinking Environment, Remaking Theory’, by posing the question of just what kinds of analytical challenges and conceptual possibilities are being established by large scale environmental processes. We consider how the insights of science and technology studies and its long record of thinking about how to incorporate non-humans into social theory might need to be extended in thinking about the complex entanglements of people and things revealed by processes like anthropogenic climate change and concepts like ‘the anthropocene’. We touch on anthropological discussions about ontological politics and ‘new materialist’ debates in political philosophy to consider what insights they may have to offer, before describing up the papers in this special issue elaborated upon, question and extend our ways of thinking about contemporary environmental challenges.

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