Political Geology

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Political Geology: An Introduction

   • Adam Bobbette, Amy Donovan

   Pages 1-34

3. Political Geologies of Knowledge

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 35-35

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   2. Genealogies of Geomorphological Techniques

      • Rachael Tily

      Pages 37-69

   3. Baroque Soil: Mexico City in the Aftermath

      • Seth Denizen

      Pages 71-104

   4. Geo-Metrics and Geo-Politics: Controversies in Estimating European Shale Gas Resources

      • Kärg Kama, Magdalena Kuchler

      Pages 105-145

   5. From Becoming-Geology to Geology-Becoming: Hashima as Geopolitics

      • Deborah Dixon

      Pages 147-165

4. Amodern Political Geologies

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 167-167

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   2. Cosmological Reason on a Volcano

      • Adam Bobbette

      Pages 169-199

   3. Against ‘Terrenism’: Léopold Sédar Senghor, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Fear of a De-spiritualised Earth

      • Angela Last

      Pages 201-217

   4. How the Earth Remembers and Forgets

      • Bronislaw Szerszynski

      Pages 219-236

5. Political Geologies of the Future

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 237-237

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   2. Attention in the Anthropocene: On the Spiritual Exercises of Any Future Science

      • Simone Kotva

      Pages 239-261

   3. Political Geologies of Magma

      • Nigel Clark

      Pages 263-292

   4. Politics of the Lively Geos: Volcanism and Geomancy in Korea

      • Amy Donovan

      Pages 293-343

6. Epilogue

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 345-345

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   2. Encountering the Earth: Political Geological Futures?

      • Adam Bobbette, Amy Donovan

      Pages 347-371

7. Back Matter

   Pages 373-379

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This book explores the emerging field of political geology, an area of study dedicated to understanding the cross-sections between geology and politics. It considers how geological forces such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and unstable ground are political forces and how political forces have an impact on the earth. Together the authors seek to understand how the geos has been known, spoken for, captured, controlled and represented while creating the active underlying strata for producing worlds. 


This comprehensive collection covers a variety of interdisciplinary topics including the history of the geological sciences, non-Western theories of geology, the origin of the earth, and the relationship between humans and nature. It includes chapters that re-think the earth’s ‘geostory’ as well as case studies on the politics of earthquakes in Mexico city, shamans on an Indonesian volcano, geologists at Oxford, and eroding islands in Japan. In each case political geology is attentive to the encounters between political projects and the generative geological materials that are enlisted and often slip, liquefy or erode away. This book will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners across the political and geographical sciences, as well as to philosophers of science, anthropologists and sociologists more broadly. 

• Political geology
• political ecology
• Anthropocene
• history of sciences
• geology
• human-geological interactions
• Geomorphological Techniques
• Geo-politics
• Geopower
• non-Western theories of geology
• ‘geostory’
• cultural geography
• human geography
• Amodern Political Geology
• magmatic politics
• climate change
• carbon footprint
• Environmental Geography

“It has been widely assumed that social scientists should confine their attention to the surface of the Earth: in consequence, they have had little to say about the Earth’s geology. This wonderful collection finally ends this strange silence and, in bringing the study of politics to the Earth’s depths, opens up a whole new field of historical and geographical enquiry.” (Andrew Barry, Department of Geography, University College London, UK)

“Whether the most recent epoch in the history of our planet should be termed the Anthropocene has yet to be determined, but the ensuing disputes have left no doubt that we live in an era of political geology. Controversies about resource use, climate change, and distinctions between the geological, biological and human have brought a new appreciation of the political dimensions of the Earth sciences. Ranging from India and Korea to Poland and Mexico, this wide-ranging volume is vital reading for anyone who wishes to understand the role of the geosciences in current debates.” (James A. Secord, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, UK)

“Political Geology is a smart and inspiring collection that includes some of the best writers on the topic. Don’t however be mistaken: it is not merely about the solid ground beneath our feet; instead, the earth is moved as numbers, calculations, projects; it haunts as colonial memories and as material dynamics. This book is one key collection that helps to outline the (geo)political stakes of the Anthropocene.” (Jussi Parikka, University of Southampton, author of A Geology of Media)

 

 

• Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

  Adam Bobbette, Amy Donovan

Adam Bobbette is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Amy Donovan is a lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, UK and at King’s College London, UK. 

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