From SAGE Publishing via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: epub 2021-03-30Publication status: PublishedThis commentary on William Jamieson’s article, ‘For Granular Geography’, which illuminates the granular relations of sand as it is transformed by capitalist urbanism, suggests that understanding what might constitute granular geographies requires further consideration of the multiplicities of granular material. It considers the manifold values of sand beyond its worth as an economic resource and explores the temporalities associated with the movement and fixity of sand. It goes on to argue that there is a need for renewed focus on the impacts of sand extraction for local communities and landscapes as well as for more substantive accounts of the myriad mobile choreographies of sand in processes of place-making

Kothari, Uma

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CommentaryMultiplicities of sandscapesand granular geographiesUma KothariUniversity of Manchester, UKAbstractThis commentary on William Jamieson’s article, ‘For Granular Geography’, which illuminates the granularrelations of sand as it is transformed by capitalist urbanism, suggests that understanding what mightconstitute granular geographies requires further consideration of the multiplicities of granular material.It considers the manifold values of sand beyond its worth as an economic resource and explores thetemporalities associated with the movement and fixity of sand. It goes on to argue that there is a need forrenewed focus on the impacts of sand extraction for local communities and landscapes as well as for moresubstantive accounts of the myriad mobile choreographies of sand in processes of place-making.Keywordsgranular geographies, place-making, sand extraction, sandscapes, temporalitiesWilliam Jamieson’s (2021) fascinating article takessand as its focus to provide an account of how cap-ital exploits this granular material. Specifically,Jamieson outlines what he terms ‘a granular cri-tique’ of ‘capital’s commodification of sand and themounting global sand crisis’. In illuminating themultiple geographies in which sand participates asit is transformed by capitalist urbanism, he suggeststhat their dynamic interconnection is best under-stood through granular relations, with implicationsfor understanding natural resources, urbanisation,and territory. As such, Jamieson’s article contri-butes to growing scholarly attention towards gran-ular materials and the increasing global demand forsand, a topic that has recently gained renewed inter-est in geography. In particular, Jamieson’s argumentusefully supplements critical discussions about theextensive extraction of sand to build cities andthe ambiguous politics of land reclamation. Giventhe emerging crisis of the scarcity of sand (Torreset al., 2017), and the devastating ecological conse-quences of sand mining for the places from which itis extracted (Lamb et al., 2019), Jamieson’s article isimportant and timely.While his paper contributes to the limited scho-larship on the material life of sand, and foregroundsthe important concept of granularity, in my opinionthe multiplicities of this granular material requiremore substantive investigation. While Jamiesonhelpfully suggests that granular relations characterisethe disparate processes by which landscapes becomeinterconnected through the commodification of sand,Corresponding author:Uma Kothari, School of Environment, Education andDevelopment, University of Manchester, Oxford Road,Manchester M13 9PL, UK.Email: uma.kothari@manchester.ac.ukDialogues in Human Geography2021, Vol. 11(2) 294–297ª The Author(s) 2021Article reuse guidelines:sagepub.com/journals-permissionsDOI: 10.1177/20438206211004856journals.sagepub.com/home/dhga fuller grasp of the complexities of these granulari-ties requires us to pay attention to the multiplicities ofsand beyond his focus on relations of capital, states,and territory, and the ways in which these impactupon its materialities.While it is not possible to engage with all theissues raised by this stimulating piece, in this com-mentary I seek to develop a more detailed under-standing of what might constitute granulargeographies by focusing on four considerations thatoffer a more complex examination of sand’s multi-plicities. First, I consider the manifold values ofsand beyond its worth as an economic resource.Second, while issues of temporality are consideredin Jamieson’s article, the scope for exploring howthese temporalities are associated with the move-ment and fixity of sand are constrained by his focus;I contend that temporal dynamics have wider andmore profound implications for how we mightunderstand granular geographies. Third, issues ofscale are significant. While Jamieson’s articlefocuses on national and global scales, I argue thatit is also critical to explore how the impacts of sandextraction are profoundly felt at the micro-level,among communities for whom their sand becomesdepleted through extraction. Fourth, while Jamiesonaddresses the expansion of sovereign territory inSingapore through land reclamation, there is a needfor future research to more substantively account forthe myriad mobile choreographies of sand in pro-cesses of place-making.Sand is indubitably a vital material in modernconstruction, but limiting the analysis to its valuein relation to capital prevents a more critical,detailed study of how it constitutes and is consti-tuted by a ‘granular geography’. Indeed, Jamiesonacknowledges that ‘the disparate spatialities andtemporalities grafted together by the sand market’are connected through ‘ecologies, cities, liveli-hoods, and economies’. However, he does not con-sider the multiplicities of value invoked as sand‘transgresses borders and thresholds’. In additionto the corporate and national interests citied here,sand is valued and used differently by human andnon-human agents: myriad organisms, fisherfolk,beach goers, tourism industries, environmentalists,and those threatened by sea level rise. All thesevariously construe and value sand’s granularity indifferent ways to reveal a multiplicity of sandscapes(Peduzzi, 2014). While Jamieson recognises thatsand mediates ‘the urban and fluvial processes’, heperhaps risks reifying the distinction between theproduction of human value and that generated bythe non-human agencies that ceaselessly reconsti-tute and produce sand. The adoption of an overarch-ing analytical framework that insists that theeconomic base is the fundamental level of analysiscan only reproduce the anthropocentric perspectivethrough which value is defined, thereby minimisingthe non-human; anthropocentrism is foregroundedby this focus on the economic. While it is the case,as Yusoff (2017: 113) notes, that ‘capitalism hasnaturalized itself to the earth, feeding off the fossilstocks and mineral flows of the substratum’, there isa need to more fully acknowledge ‘the role of thenonhuman in mutually transforming relations in theproduction of space’ (Forsyth, 2016: 798). More-over, in following other recent work that emphasisessand’s economic demands and uses, this focus onhuman interventions such as sand mining, extrac-tion, and land reclamation can overlook how sandis not simply a marketable, economic resource.Sand is variously and simultaneously an affec-tive, aesthetic, and sensory material. It is entangledin relations that connect people, places, temporal-ities, and elements, imbricated with ecological andenvironmental processes and with political and cul-tural implications. Sandscapes thus have multipledimensions, being ascribed with a range of mean-ings and associated with numerous multisensoryand emotional responses. For example, those wholive in island places where sand is extracted do notsolely lose an economic resource. The removal ofsand changes the shape of their islands and necessi-tates a shift in social activities such as those associ-ated with beaches and fishing. Additionally, sand isa central cultural product for leisure and island tour-ism. Thus, rather than separating out the cultural andthe material, it is necessary to consider how thesedimensions of sand intertwine and how such entan-glements co-create a unique sense of place (Kothariand Arnall, 2020). The development of a more sub-stantive social-cultural-ecological understanding ofKothari 295sand could more effectively illuminate these multi-plicities of value.Jamieson recognises that ‘the temporalities ofsand extraction and land reclamation are as incom-mensurable as their spatialities’. This assertionraises the potential for a broader investigation intosand’s multiple temporalities and connections, andsuch research might offer a productive spatialunderstanding of such interconnected temporalities.While it is certainly the case that ‘geomorphologicaltemporality is accelerated by the urban productionof space’, a discussion about how sand’s granularitybecomes ‘frozen’ could be expanded. For example,the sand locked into buildings will ultimatelydevolve back into sandy substrate over millenniaas the cycles of destruction and reconstruction thatwill transform cities will also create new materialstratigraphies. Thus, the adoption of a more exten-sive temporal perspective would illuminate how thesand used to make concrete is only temporarilyfixed within a building assemblage of which it ispart, for buildings are dismantled and crumble, andsubsequently, the granular elements producedthrough erosion return to lands, rivers, and seas(Edensor, 2020). These mutable, shifting granularmaterialities come to belong to different mixes,alignments, and flows, and over large spans of time;this extended temporal lens could narrate these dif-ferent granular becomings and dissipations, thesheer dynamism through which sandscapes arecomposed and recomposed.In addition, in Jamieson’s article, the relationsand connections through sand are largely envisagedfrom a global, macro-level perspective, somewhatoverlooking the profound, manifold implications ofa granular geography for local environments andcommunities. Sand is removed, moved, and settledthrough multiple micro-level processes as well ashuman and non-human interventions. Although hewrites that ‘it is with the production of sand as aresource with which this granular geographybegins’, little mention is made of the micro-levelproduction and movement of sand by agenciesincluding tides, wind, rain, the work of crabs, andother non-human organisms as well as the dailyactivities of people who live in places from wheresand is extracted. Moreover, the focus on theeconomic means that there is little discussion of the‘cost’ of sand extraction for local communitiesbeyond those that are financial and material. Forplaces from which sand has been extracted experi-ence considerable ecological, aesthetic, and socio-cultural costs. For example, when sand is extractedfrom around low-lying islands, land becomesunstable through beach erosion, lagoons becomesilted, and tidal flows change direction. Thus, thosewho bear the costs are not solely or primarilythose engaged in the commodification of sand butthose whose lives depend on sand for their continu-ing existence. This perspective towards granularrelations highlights the profound effects caused bythe removal of sand in local environments, and theseare not merely concerned with livelihoods but alsothe aesthetic and recreational pleasures that sandbestows for local inhabitants.In further considering terms of scale, wider dis-tinctions could also be usefully made between dif-ferent forms and extents of extraction. Sand miningdoes not always involve the high bulk extraction ofbig industry. For instance, on some islands in theIndian Ocean, sand is extracted by hand; divers onsmall dug out boats go out into the middle of thelagoon and scoop up sand by hand filling small hes-sian sacks. Any analysis of the movement and usesof a tiny granular material must necessitate thinkingabout scale, and take account of the diversity ofrelations and effects of the removal and uses of sandin different places as well as the different workpractices, sensations, and technologies deployed inits extraction. It is therefore essential that the pro-found significance of a granular geography on poorand marginalised communities who live in placesfrom which sand is removed is not obscured. Atten-tion to these settings would more substantivelyunravel the deep histories and the everyday encoun-ters across space, place, and time that constitutesandscapes.Jamieson argues that sand is ‘inherently itiner-ant’ and, as such, its ‘promiscuous ability to makeand unmake territories is expressive of the dyna-mism at the core of the granular state(s) of matter’.While this is the case, sand is a dynamic material,yet it is also stilled and fixed through divergentlytemporary processes, which are not solely296 Dialogues in Human Geography 11(2)configured through the mining practices that pro-duce the stasis to which Jamieson refers. Indeed, itis critical to reflect on the multiple ways in whichsand emerges in conditions of temporary fixity andthe broader granular relations through which placeis made and unmade. For instance, in many smallislands, sand is collected, manipulated, and rear-ranged daily and then stilled and compacted toreplace beaches lost through sand extraction anderosion. In some coastal places, copious quantitiesare collected to fill sandbags and lay them along theshore to prevent further movement, stabilise thecoastline, and keep the sea at bay. Here where sandis stabilised, stilled, and fixed in space, albeit tem-porarily, there are a range of emotional and sensoryreactions that cannot be captured by a focus on theeconomy alone. For example, in many islands in theMaldives, the fixing of sand in place has requiredthe building of groynes. These have significantlychanged the aesthetic qualities of the islands anddisplaced community gatherings and collective fish-ing events that had previously taken place along thelong, unhindered stretch of coastline. There are fur-ther temporal dimensions to how sand moves, accu-mulates, and comes to rest. From the perspective ofplaces where it is captured and stabilised for use as aconstruction material in distant urban places, sand iseffectively taken ‘out of circulation’ from the phys-ical environment and from human activities. Thisfurther highlights how situating sand and narratingits place-making ability through its relations to land-scapes, people, and animals as well as ecologicaland environmental processes is important beyondconsiderations of territory and economy.Jamieson’s paper offers an important contribu-tion to understandings of granular relations andsystems through an exploration of how the commo-dification and instrumentalisation of sand as aresource connects distant landscapes. It also offersan invitation to undertake a wider exploration ofsand’s ‘granular’ character, its materiality as agrain and as a mass of grains. Despite foreground-ing the notion of granularity, there is much scopefor greater investigation into this potentially rich,multi-layered concept, and how it might be con-strued in diverse ways. In this light, there is a needto more seriously consider the sensory, affective,and productive qualities of sand to better conceptua-lise how its excavation, accumulation, and circula-tion produces human and non-human entanglements,connects people and places to granular geographies,and ultimately produces new ways of writing aboutsandscapes.Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interestwith respect to the research, authorship, and/or publica-tion of this article.FundingThe author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financialsupport for the research, authorship, and/or publication ofthis article: Part of the research for this publication wassupported by the ESRC DfID Poverty AlleviationResearch Programme (grant number ES/R002185/1).ReferencesEdensor T (2020) Stone: Stories of Urban Materiality.London: Palgrave.Forsyth I (2014) Designs on the desert: camouflage,deception and the militarization of space. CulturalGeographies 21(2): 247–265.Jamieson W (2021) For granular geography. Dialogues inHuman Geography. DOI: 10.1177/2043820620950053.Kothari U and Arnall A (2020) Shifting sands: therhythms and temporalities of island sandscapes.Geoforum 108: 305–314.Lamb V, Marschke M and Rigg J (2019) Trading sand,undermining lives: omitted livelihoods in the globaltrade in sand. Annals of the American Association ofGeographers 109(5): 1511–1528.Peduzzi P (2014) Sand, rarer than one thinks. Environ-mental Development 11: 208–218.Torres A, Brandt J, Lear K, et al. (2017) A looming tra-gedy of the sand commons. Science 357(6355):970–971.Yusoff K (2017) Geosocial strata. Theory, Culture &Society 34(2–3): 105–127.Kothari 297

Multiplicities of sandscapes and granular geographies

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Multiplicities of sandscapes and granular geographies

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