Feminist Geographies of New Materialism

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Feminist approaches gave pioneering impetus to the social as well as to the natural sciences. Recently, a new theoretical approach, strongly influenced by feminist thinking, provides innovative conceptions of societal problems: the new materialism that focuses on the pivotal role of materiality in social and natural processes alike. Building on the tradition of feminist insights, the approach aims to overcome dualisms of any sort (i.e. between different genders or between culture and nature). This crucial contribution of feminist theorizing, however, has been rarely discussed and not been adopted in geography even though it addresses some of the discipline¿s pivotal problems like the complex interrelation between humans and nature. The scientific network aims at revealing the feminist references and traditions within the new materialism, at making it productive for German speaking human geography and at contributing to the ongoing international debate on feminist theory by collaboratively developing innovative agendas for the analysis of materiality. In order to develop "feminist geographies of new materialism", three consecutive aims structure the network¿s approach: (1) the detailed reconstruction of feminist-materialist works and a systematization of continuities between older and newer approaches to materiality; (2) a thorough transfer of feminist theoretical work on the new materialism to geographical theory production as well as to respective empirical research designs; and (3) a return of these insights into the international feminist theoretical discussion on materiality.