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Going against the flow. Reaction to Veronica Strang

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2015

Johan Normark
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Extract

In her discussion article ‘Fluid consistencies. Material relationality in human engagements with water’, Veronica Strang argues that ‘water provides a useful focus for thinking about relationships between things and persons and between material properties and meanings’ (Strang 2014, 133, emphasis added). Water permeates organic things and flows and connects in a multi-scalar way. Therefore her article emphasizes ‘how material and social processes combine to provide both fluidity and consistency at every level of human–non-human engagement’ (ibid., 133). Ontologically speaking, the emphasis on fluid relations and processes makes her a relationist, i.e. objects emerge from their internal or external relations (Harman 2009). I will summarize my reactions to her article in three major points.

Type
Reaction
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 199 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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