Sociology and the New Materialism.

1. Sociology and the New Materialism. Why matter matters – sociologically. Nick J Fox, Universities of Sheffield and Huddersfield, UK @socnewmat

2. What can a sociological imagination do? • Sociological imagination as outlook. • Sociological imagination as concept. • Sociological imagination as capacity. • A sociological imagination enables us to think differently about the world. • The new materialisms offer that potential for renewing our sociological imagination. @socnewmat

3. The ‘turn to matter’ in sociology • ‘New materialist’ ontology: • Not entities but relations. • Not agency but affects (the capacity to affect or be affected). • Not structures but un/stable assemblages. • Not construction but production. • Not textualities but matter. @socnewmat

4. What are the new materialisms? • A range of approaches that focus on materiality. • Distinct from historical materialism (Marxism). • Non–essentialist. • Post-anthropocentric and posthuman. • Monist rather than dualist. • actor-network theory. • assemblage approaches. • biophilosophy. • feminist posthumanism. • non-representational theory. • onto-epistemology. • post-qualitative methods. • Spinozist monism. • vital materialism.

5. Two leaps: 1. Pluri-potentiality • We have no idea what a body can do until we see it in context. • Relationality. • Capacities not attributes. • Different capacities in different contexts. @socnewmat

6. Two leaps: 2. Lively matter • New materialists recognise the capacity of all matter to affect/be affected. • So matter is lively, some say vital. • Matter assembles in unstable, unpredictable and continually fluctuating ways. @socnewmat

7. From dualism to monism • Sociology has often used dualisms to construct its ontology. • The new materialisms adopt a flat or monist ontology focusing on ‘the event’ as the engine of production of the social world. agency - structure culture - nature emotion - reason gender - sex human – non-human idealism - realism individual - social micro - macro mind – matter nature – culture power – resistance subject - object

8. New materialism and sociology • Cut across nature/culture, mind/matter dualism. • Bodies and other matter are not fixed, stable entities, but relational and uneven. • De-privileges human agency: an ethical and political counter to humanism. • Materially embedded and embodied ontology that can be used both to research the social world and to seek to change it for the better. • Moves beyond realist/constructionist debates.

9. A new materialist toolkit • Relations • Assemblages • Affect • Capacities • Micropolitics

10. The assemblage • Events and interactions are assemblages ofrelations. • Assemblages are: ‘a kind of chaotic network of habitual and non-habitual connections, always in flux, always reassembling in different ways’ (Potts 2004: 19). • Assemblages produce bodies, society and the entirety of the social and natural world. @socnewmat

11. Affects • Affect = ‘a capacity to affect or be affected’. • Affect replace ‘agency’ in social theory. • Relations assemble because of their capacities to affect each other. • Flows of affect produce events (bodies, identities, social life, history, social institutions, discourses) micropolitically.

12. Strands in the new materialisms @socnewmat

13. New materialist methodologies • Major and minor science. • Representaion vs. ‘following’. • Non-representational theory. • Post-qualitative methodology. • Onto-epistemology and diffraction. • The research assemblage.

14. The research assemblage • Research can be understood as an assemblage. research tools and methods – researcher - audience - philosophy of science – previous research – research contexts – ethics – local research culture – etc. Inquiry. • These relations affect and are affected, producing the micropolitics of social inquiry. • The RA’s affects and micropolitics can be analysed, to understand how it works. Fox, N.J.and Alldred, P. (2015) New materialist social inquiry: designs, methods and the research-assemblage. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 18(4): 399-414.

15. How to do materialist research • The event (assemblage) is the unit of analysis. • Use research collection techniques to identify relations and affects in the assemblage. • What capacities do these affects produce in bodies, organisations, things? • What is the micropolitics of the affect-economy? (Which affects are powerful? How do they produce continuity or change? Is resistance possible and how? • How do contexts changethese micropolitics? Fox, N. J. and Alldred, P. (2015) Inside the research-assemblage: New materialism and the micropolitics of social inquiry. Sociological Research Online, 20(2), 6. http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/2/6.html

16. An approach to data collection • Use data collection methods to explore events in terms of relations, affects and capacities. • Shift from a humanistic focus on experiences, reflections or subject positions. • Instead explore affective interactions between human/non-human relations. • Mix methods to gather richest data. Fox, N. J. and Alldred, P. (2015) Inside the research-assemblage: New materialism and the micropolitics of social inquiry. Sociological Research Online, 20(2), 6. http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/2/6.html

17. An approach to data analysis • Identify relations in the event/assemblage from interviews, ethnographic, survey data. • Examine the data to disclose the flows of affect between relations and what these affects do. • Analyse the data to identify the capacities produced in human and non-human relations. • Assess the micropolitics of the assemblage. Fox, N. J. and Alldred, P. (2015) Inside the research-assemblage: New materialism and the micropolitics of social inquiry. Sociological Research Online, 20(2), 6. http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/2/6.html

18. Three materialist studies • Obesity: the need for a societal solution. • Sex and technology: Viagra, erectile dysfunction and the sexuality assemblage. • Environmental sustainability: beyond anthropocentrism.

19. Assembling obesity and weight loss • Why is it so hard to lose weight and keep it off? Fox, N.J. et al. (2016) The micropolitics of obesity: materialism, neoliberal markets and food sovereignty. Sociology. doi: 10.1177/0038038516647668 @socnewmat

20. Inside the obesity-assemblage • humans (‘husband’, ‘little girl’, ‘Auntie’, ‘parents’, ‘doctor’); • food (‘extra lean meat’, ‘curry’, ‘French cuisine’, ‘biscuit’, chocolate’); • resources (‘money’, ‘time’), supermarkets, restaurants and take-away stores; • body parts (‘complexion’, ‘skin’); • physical entities (‘house’, ‘this area’); • organisations and institutions (‘Slimming World’, workplaces, food bank); • abstract concepts (‘BMI’, ‘metabolism’). @socnewmat

21. A materialist analysis The becoming-fat assemblage: body; food; food retailers; food industry; family and friends The becoming-slim(mer) assemblage: body; food; food retailers; food industry; family and friends; ‘healthy eating’; slimming organisations Losing weight opposes the desire of the slimmer to powerful forces within the assemblage. An unequal struggle! @socnewmat

22. Implications for public health • Fighting the obesity epidemic cannot rely upon individual efforts to lose weight. • We need to address the powerful forces within the obesity assemblage, including the food industry. • Support local food producers and retailers, and challenge and regulate food monopolies. • Provide alternatives to high-calorie fast food. • This needs to be central to a public health approach to tackling obesity. @socnewmat

23. The materiality of sexualities • Sexual events (a kiss, a date) are assemblages, comprising a multiplicity of physical, biological, cultural, social and abstract materialities. • Sexuality is the flow of affects between these material relations in a sexuality-assemblage (Fox and Alldred, 2013). • Sexuality-assemblages shape the eroticism, sexual codes, customs and conduct of a society’s members, as well as the categories of sexuality. • Sexuality is infinitely variable, but typically highly constrained by aggregative forces (predominantly social, cultural, economic and political). @socnewmat

24. Sexuality assemblages A sexuality-assemblage might include, at least: hormones – sex organs - (sexual) past history – sexual others – sexual imagery/marketing/porn – objects (clothing, condoms, alcohol etc.) - romance – love – marriage – social and economic relations @socnewmat

25. Sex and technology: Viagra • Viagra as treatment for erectile dysfunction (ED). • Explore Viagra as part of a sexuality-assemblage. • Qualitative research study of online forum that discussed ED and Viagra. • Participant observation and follow-up interviews. @socnewmat

26. Flows of affect in the Viagra assemblage ‘I was panicking because of not being able to maintain my erection ... sometimes it went down totally, (which) was really disappointing my partner. From that moment I guess I gotperformance anxiety. My best friend at the office introduced me to Viagra a week after he saw my attitude change at the office due to my noticeable depression. Thanks to Viagra, I felt I am gaining my manhood again, but now lazy of doing sex without the blue pill. I am now becoming a big fan of Viagra, and afraid of having sex without it.’ (George) @socnewmat

27. The Viagra assemblage sex – bedroom – penis – male sexuality – Viagra – identity - consumerism – sex partner - internet - industry – profit – shareholders (Fox and Ward 2008) @socnewmat

28. What else can Viagra do? • Viagra was designed to produce a specific body (capacity) - erection. But it also: • Medicalises sexualities. • Privileges male penetration over other sexual activity. • Creates expectations. • Contributes to sexual and health identities. • Affects intimate relationships. • Produces dependency. • Makes money ($1.5 bn a year)for its manufacturer Pfizer. @socnewmat

29. Sociology and ‘environment’ • Human exceptionalist paradigm: human culture independent of physical processes (humanist). • New ecological paradigm: humans are part of the global ecosystem, and are governed by the same ‘ecological laws’ as other species (anti-humanist). • Both sustain a distinction or opposition between humans and environment, with the latter subordinate to ‘society’. @socnewmat

30. Professor RosiBraidotti Environment and posthumanism • Overcome nature/culture and human/environment dualisms. • Environment as assemblage, not system. • Human bodies are non-privileged parts of the ‘environment’. • This approach is post-anthropocentric, posthuman and materialist. • Human and non-human capacities are inter-dependent and inter-connected (Braidotti, 2013: 49-50). @socnewmat

31. The UN and ‘sustainability’ • Sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (Brundtland et al, 1987). • United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: conserve ecosystems that can ‘continue to supply the services that underpin all aspects of human life’. • Of 17 Goals in 2016 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development - only three addressed non-human development! @socnewmat

32. What is ‘sustainability’ anyway? The Earth/Universe is continually changing. ‘Sustainable development’ is an anthropocentric concept. Sustainability as becoming notcontinuity. @socnewmat

33. Humans’ unique capacities • Jane Bennett (2010) rejects the environmentalist argument we should ‘tread lightly on the Earth’. • Sometimes environmental becoming may need ‘grander, more dramatic and violent expenditures of human energy’. • Fox: humans are part of the environment and have capacities rarely seen elsewhere on Earth: • the capacity to attribute meaning to events; • act altruistically; • imagine and create technologies; and • use reason to theorise, predict or anticipate future events. • Use these unique capacities to counter past actions. @socnewmat

34. Rethinking ‘sustainability’ • Do not assess environment benefit in terms of human goals. • Well-being of the human species are linked intrinsically to environmental becoming. • Ensure environmental possibilities are increased not decreased: • Don’t treat matter (non-human and human) as a resource to be bought and sold in a market-place. • Valorise matter for its relational vitality: its potential for becoming. • Reject capitalist model of endless growth to achieve human economic prosperity. @socnewmat

35. An ecological sociology • Ensure environmental possibilities are increased not decreased. • Enhance the possibilities for all animate and inanimate entities, not just humans. • Avoid limiting environmental futures through human actions (e.g. pollution, anthropocentric climate change). • Do not constrain a range of possible environmental futures. • Human well-being will emerge as a consequence of wider sustainability policies. @socnewmat

36. Conclusions • Materialist and posthuman approaches re-connect culture to nature, human to non-human, matter to mind. • They open up new understandings of sexualities, embodiment, health, technology, environment. • These perspectives offer new theoretical, research and scholarly opportunities. • But they also inform policy and activism - and offer new understandings of major social issues: from citizenship to sexualities to climate change. @socnewmat

37. Thanks for listening! @socnewmat