Material Politics
Disputes Along the Pipeline
RGS-IBG Book Series

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

Andrew Barry is Professor of Human Geography at University College London.