The Dictionary of Human Geography

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through which the agency and, it is argued,

inherent ‘liveliness’ of the material world

might be addressed. jwy

materialism The history of materialism as a

keyword in Westernphilosophycan be traced

back to the Early Atomists in Greek thought,

particularly Democritus, and thereon in

the writings of Epicurus and Lucretius.

Materialism has multiple strands, more-or-

less mechanistic and more-or-less sensational-

ist. What each shares is the metaphysical claim

that the nature, constitution and structure of

reality are physical. Materialism is typically

contrasted to various forms ofspiritualismor

otherworldly existence (such as belief in God

or supernatural beings), or toidealism– that

is to say, a metaphysics that privileges mental

entities – in other words, minds and their

states – over physical entities. Of course, dual-

ist metaphysics that admit as ‘real’ both phys-

ical and mental entities are also possible.

The Italian philologist Sebastiano Timpanaro

provides one of the most forthright definitions

of materialism on record. In his monograph

On materialism,hewrites:

By materialism we understand above all

acknowledgement of the priority of nature

over ‘mind’, or if you like, of the physical

level over the biological level, and of the

biological level over the socio-economic

and cultural level; both in the sense of

chronological priority. .. and in the sense

of the conditioning which nature still exer-

cises on man and will continue to exercise

for the foreseeable future. Cognitively,

therefore, the materialist maintains that

experience cannot be reduced either to a

production of reality by a subject. .. or to

a reciprocal implication of subject and

object. (1976, p. 34)

Few would disagree that the physical world

precedes life and consciousness, and that

other life forms precede the human. But to

contend thatnatureis a self-evident or even

autonomous domain that unilaterally condi-

tions ‘man’ is problematic. As Raymond

Williams (2005b [1980]) notes, Timpanaro’s

separation of nature and human wilfully

ignores the fact that the materials that com-

prise nature are extrinsic and intrinsic to

human beings. Additionally, a diverse litera-

ture on theproduction of naturewithin

fields such as agrarian studies,marxist geog-

raphy, and science and technology studies

(seescience/science studies) – armed with

a retinue of concepts such as ‘social

nature’, ‘cyborg’, ‘techno-natures’ and ‘post-

humanism’ (Seeposthumanism) – demolishes

the notion of an independent nature.

What, then, binds materialism in its various

forms – historical,dialectical, linguistic, cul-

tural andpostmodern? First, there is a rejec-

tion of spiritualism and idealism (indeed,

radical materialists would contend that the

dichotomy between idealism and materialism

is itself an artefact of idealism); second, there

is an emphasis on the social effects of an

object- or material-world that is at least partly

autonomous of humans; and, third, there is a

commitment to forms ofexplanationthat are

attentive to the specific properties of materials

as they influence – in often unpredictable ways

• various sorts of interactions between human
  and non-human bodies. A specifically Marxist
  materialism might additionally assert that
  materialism is ultimately about how amode
  of production constitutes matter (nature,
  human bodies, language) through social
  labour – which then carries the implication
  that any being is a historical and political
  fabrication. vg

Suggested reading

Althusser (1977 [1965]); Smith (1984); Williams

(2005b [1980]).

mean information field (m.i.f.) The repre-

sentation of adistance-decayrelationship by

a rectangular spatial grid, used in Torsten

Ha ̈gerstrand’s (1916–2004) classic studies of

migrationanddiffusion(see Ha ̈gerstrand,

1967). The m.i.f. was used insimulation

models, in which the central square in a

5 5 grid represented a migrant’s origin,

and the probabilities in the other 24 squares

indicated the likelihood of them being the des-

tination: the probabilities were either obtained

from empirical analyses of migration patterns

or pre-defined arbitrarily. Running themodel

many times generated an average pattern of

the likely population distribution following a

period of migration or the spread of aninnov-

ation– such as a new practice or a disease.

(See alsoagent-based modelling.) rj

measurement A classification of data types,

the characteristics of which are important in

determining what quantitative analytical pro-

cedures can be deployed. Four levels are gen-

erally recognized:

 nominal– each individual is allocated to

one selected from an exclusive list of

categories;

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_M Final Proof page 449 1.4.2009 3:19pm

MEASUREMENT