Routledge Entanglement in the World’s Becoming and the Doing of New Materialist Inquiry

Entanglement in the World’s Becoming and the Doing of New Materialist Inquiry explores new materialist concepts and the ways in which they provoke an opening up of thought about being human, and about being more-than-human. The more-than-human refers, here, to the world that we are of – a world that includes humans, who are emergent and permeable, and all of the animal and earth others they intra-act with. It explores how we affect those others and are affected. This book engages intimately in encounters of various kinds, some drawn from the author’s everyday life, some from the research projects she has engaged in over several decades, and some from others’ research. It works at the interface of living- and writing-as-inquiry, delving into the rich seam of conceptual possibilities opened up by Deleuze and Guattari, and Barad, and by new materialist inquiry more broadly. It brings not just words to the task, but also art, photopraphs, movement, memories, bodies, sound, touch, things. It delves into the ways in which the entangled dynamics of social, material and semiotic flows and forces make up the diffractive movements through which life emerges, assembles itself, and endures. New materialist concepts, as they are explored here, offer new and emergent approaches to life itself, and to ways in which we might research our lives as they are intricately enfolded in the life of the earth. Review "Bold, new/old terms, diffraction, new materialist thought, entangled assemblages, interconnected becomings, and more, a brilliant articulation, poetic, autobiographical, lyrical, standing on the shoulders of Barad and Deleuze & Guattari, Bronwyn’s new book leads us into the next decade, BRILLIANT." -- Norman K. Denzin, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign "In Entanglement in the World’s Becoming and the Doing of New Materialist Inquiry Bronwyn Davies has written an unputdownable page-turner. It is a rare and exciting scholarly text that draws readers in. This is a clear, beautifully written book that deserves more than one reading. The writing is powerful, vulnerable and absorbing. This work is written with the generosity and sympathy that it offers and advocates. It is a book that deserves, and evokes, our attention and response-ability." Jane Speedy, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Bristol. "Entanglement in the World’s Becoming and the Doing of New Materialist Inquiry is a lucid, engrossing and energising, deep dive into the possibilities and challenges facing qualitative researchers in these times. Bronwyn Davies takes us through the implications of theory into a series of experimental forays into life itself, where the researcher is implicated at every turn. This is a turn to ‘ambulatory’ methods and modes of thought: expansive, creative, unsettling and thrilling. She develops new areas of inquiry and revisits classic work on gender, subjectivity, children, schooling, academic life, intimacy, abjection, recognition, the body in place by entering into potent and often poignant moments of being and becoming. Anyone who has ever read and loved her work will be stunned again by the freshness of her thinking, rigorous and clear-eyed theoretical engagement, and courageous recasting of what it might be to be a researcher entangling with the world." -- Susanne Gannon, Associate Professor of Education, Western Sydney University "Once again, Bronwyn Davies has written a tantalising guide to the possibilities of research that entangle new materialist philosophy with post-qualitative research, autoethnography and collective biography, though this time the project is further enhanced by its engagement with the visual arts and literature. Each central chapter provides a different exemplar that works through entanglements that draw on aspects of family history, gendered violence, the position of children in the world, indigenous recognition and/or vibrant li