Cultural Geography

is figured, how can Marxists come to knowthe

nature they speak of? If, after Harvey and Smith,

culture ‘conceals’ the realities of nature, or if,

after Goodman et al., Busch et al. and Kloppen-

burg, science as class culture constructs its own

truths, then how can Marxists claim an ‘ideology-

free’ understanding of the natural? This, as I will

go on to show, is a fundamental problem for the

Marxist tradition in geography and without, and

one that is inadequately addressed by successive

redefinitions of the materiality of culture and

nature.

ARTICULATION AND DIALECTIC

One way that Marxists have challenged the con-

ceptual policing and dilemmas intrinsic to deter-

minative approaches is to think of culture and

nature as articulated dialectically. As with almost

all Marxian work in this area, a key role for the

economic is retained but, instead of the ontologi-

cal triad being conceived vertically (nature

underpins economy which, in turn, shapes

culture), the metaphors used are more horizontal

(no more base and superstructure). This makes a

lot of sense. As Maurice Godelier aptly put it,

‘since a society has neither a top nor a bottom ...

the distinction between infrastructure and super-

structure ... cannot be taken as a distinction

between levels or instances’ (1986: 18–19). As

we’ll see momentarily, this is not to ‘demote’

economic relations but rather to resituate them in

a more complex field of relations that includes

organic and inorganic entities, mental represen-

tations, symbolic codes and communicative

interaction. Here, then, the cultural and the

natural are brought closer together by way of a

more fluid theoretical imagination.

To illustrate what I mean, let me look briefly

at the work of geographers Donald Moore (1996)

and Michael Watts (Pred and Watts, 1992;

Watts, 1998), whose thinking is informed by

Antonio Gramsci and Althusser/Benjamin

respectively. Moore’s Marxian political ecology

attempts to make sense of conflicts over access

to resources among men, women, peasants and

state actors in eastern Zimbabwe during the

1980s. As a way of moving beyond Marxism’s

‘tired orthodoxies’ (Moore, 1996: 126) Moore

turns to Gramsci in order to ‘underscore ...

how symbolic struggles effect material transfor-

mation ... [C]ultural meanings are constitutive

forces ... not simply reflections of a material

base’ (1996: 127). Like some of the best work in

so-called ‘Third World political ecology’,

Moore’s approach is synthetic, attuned to the

contingent unfolding of events in a specific time

and place. There are two things to note here.

First, for Moore culture and nature remain rela-

tively distinct, but culture becomes the means by

and through whichstruggles over nature occur.

Second, culture here is granted a positivity – it is

not merely a domain of ideological deception. As

such, it becomes something like a full partner in

the nature–economy–culture triad, invested with

its own material effectivity. This is true for both

those in positions of power – for example, the

managers of the state nature park in Moore’s

case study – and those who seek to resist the

operations of power – in Moore’s case study,

indigenous groups who’ve been on the wrong

end of European colonialism for over a century.

In short, culture is the vital place where diverse

actors give voice to, and contest, specific

economy–environment interactions.^15

Similar themes animate Michael Watts’ bril-

liant interpretation of the ‘petrocapitalism’

fuelling the dramatic economic, cultural and

political history of modern Nigeria. Using a

creative synthesis of Althusserian and Benjamin-

ian ideas, Watts examines symbolic discontent

among followers of the Muslim Maitatsine

movement centred on the city of Kano. In the

context of rapid industrialization, a product of

Nigeria’s oil exports which linked it to the hid-

den hand of global markets, Watts shows how

the Maitatsine drew upon fantastical religious

wish images to contest the secular moral economy

fast becoming hegemonic in 1980s Nigeria. As

with Moore’s study, Watts’ point is that while

nature, economy and culture are irreducible, it’s

unproductive to see them as separate or as hier-

archically positioned in ontological terms. Each

domain has a ‘relative autonomy’, if you will,

which ensures that the materiality of each is

recognized rather than diminished. To be sure,

Nigeria’s ‘fast capitalism’ lies at the centre of the

drama for Watts, but nature is not a passive

surface, nor is culture economy’s pale florescence

(Watts, 1998). Rather, each mutually conditions

the other; they articulate in changing and contin-

gent ways that amount to a complex, one might

even say ‘overdetermined’, dialectic that is not

about famous last instances.^16

With Moore and Watts we see a more rela-

tional and less analytical approach to the culture –

nature nexus, a nexus infused by economic rela-

tions. Because both writers examine empirical

complexities, they avoid the rather rigid categor-

ial and causative claims of more theoretical

forms of Marxism. True, their relational imagi-

naries have their limits: to wit, the culture–nature

distinction is, in the final instance, maintained

throughout. But the point is that the operations

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