Materiality
RWS Concept
Materiality refers to the ecological, infrastructural, technological and resource-related conditions that shape the possibilities and constraints of regional development.
Within Regional Development in World Society (RWS), material conditions are neither treated as an external background to society nor as direct determinants of social development. Their significance emerges through the ways in which they are observed, measured, valued, organized and incorporated into decisions.
The concept addresses a central question of RWS: how do materially differentiated conditions become consequential for selective territorialization, regionalization and the formation of regionally specific development trajectories?
Working Definition
Materiality refers to the ecological, infrastructural, technological and resource-related conditions under which world-societal processes become territorially relevant and regionally consequential, including ecological systems, infrastructures, technologies, resource deposits, built environments and other physical conditions.
Material conditions can enable, constrain or intensify societal processes.
They do not determine regional outcomes directly. Their consequences depend on how they become connected to knowledge, organizational decisions, institutional arrangements, technologies, finance and governance.
Materiality is therefore relational rather than deterministic.
Theoretical Problem
Regional development necessarily takes place under materially differentiated conditions.
Regions differ in:
- resource endowments,
- ecological systems,
- infrastructures,
- settlement patterns,
- technological installations,
- accessibility,
- climatic exposure,
- water availability,
- land conditions,
- and built environments.
Yet material differences alone cannot explain regional development.
A mineral deposit does not automatically create a mining region.
A port does not automatically generate regional integration.
A mangrove ecosystem does not automatically become climate infrastructure.
Climate exposure does not automatically lead to adaptation.
The analytical question is therefore:
How do material conditions become societally relevant, and through which processes do they shape regional development?
Material Conditions and Societal Relevance
Material conditions may exist independently of whether organizations observe them.
Their societal significance, however, depends on processes of observation and interpretation.
A mineral deposit may become relevant as:
- geological knowledge,
- an investment opportunity,
- a taxable resource,
- an environmental risk,
- a source of employment,
- or an object of political conflict.
A mangrove ecosystem may be observed as:
- fishing territory,
- protected ecosystem,
- coastal protection,
- carbon storage,
- climate infrastructure,
- or an asset within emerging environmental markets.
Material conditions therefore do not carry a single societal meaning.
Their Their societal relevance emerges through differentiated forms of observation, valuation and decision-making.
Materiality and Selective Territorialization
Materiality is important for selective territorialization because material conditions influence which world-societal processes can acquire territorial relevance.
Global mineral markets become territorially relevant where economically usable deposits are identified and where technological, infrastructural, legal and organizational conditions permit extraction.
International climate governance may acquire particular relevance in areas exposed to sea-level rise, flooding, drought or ecosystem degradation.
Transport corridors may attract investment because existing infrastructures reduce logistical costs.
Material conditions therefore contribute to the selectivity of territorialization.
They do not cause particular societal connections automatically, but they shape the conditions under which certain connections become possible, attractive, urgent or conflictual.
Materiality and Regionalization
Materiality also shapes regionalization.
When newly territorialized processes encounter historically accumulated regional structures, they encounter material structures as well.
Existing roads, ports, industrial installations, settlement patterns, energy systems, ecological conditions and land-use arrangements influence how new processes can develop.
Regionalization therefore involves not only organizational and institutional structures but also materially accumulated conditions.
At the same time, regionalization transforms material environments.
New infrastructures may be built.
Land-use patterns may change.
Ecological systems may be degraded or restored.
Urban expansion may alter water systems and transport networks.
Regionalization is therefore a process in which material conditions both shape and are transformed by societal development.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is a particularly important form of materiality.
Transport networks, electricity systems, ports, communication systems, water infrastructure, schools, hospitals and research facilities influence which societal processes can be connected within a region.
Infrastructure can:
- reduce or increase spatial accessibility,
- enable economic specialization,
- support public service provision,
- shape migration and settlement,
- facilitate knowledge production,
- influence organizational capacity,
- and create long-term dependencies.
Infrastructure is therefore not merely technical.
Its regional significance emerges through its relationship to organizations, institutions, financing and patterns of use.
Climate Infrastructure
Climate-related processes make the relationship between materiality and governance particularly visible.
Within current RWS-related research, climate infrastructure can be understood as material, ecological, technological and institutional systems that stabilize, mediate or regulate climate-related processes.
Examples include:
- drainage systems,
- coastal protection,
- monitoring networks,
- water-management systems,
- mangrove ecosystems,
- adaptation infrastructure,
- energy systems,
- and institutional arrangements for climate planning.
This broader understanding makes it possible to examine how ecological and technological systems become connected to climate knowledge, finance and governance.
Ecological Systems
Ecological systems are a central component of regional materiality.
Forests, rivers, wetlands, mangroves, soils and climatic conditions affect regional possibilities and vulnerabilities.
However, RWS does not treat ecological conditions as external determinants of society.
Their regional significance depends on how they become observed and connected to societal processes.
A river may simultaneously function as:
- transport infrastructure,
- ecological habitat,
- source of drinking water,
- economic resource,
- administrative boundary,
- or object of environmental regulation.
Different organizations may therefore relate to the same material condition in different ways.
Technologies
Technology is one important mechanism through which the societal relevance of material conditions can change.
Technological change can transform the relevance of resources, distances and ecological conditions.
A mineral deposit that was previously economically inaccessible may become exploitable through technological innovation.
Digital monitoring may make environmental conditions observable in new ways.
Renewable-energy technologies may alter the regional significance of wind, solar radiation or biomass.
Technologies therefore participate in the changing societal relevance of material conditions.
Knowledge and Measurement
Materiality becomes increasingly connected to knowledge infrastructures.
Geological surveys, satellite imagery, climate models, environmental assessments, infrastructure databases and monitoring systems make material conditions observable in standardized forms.
These forms of knowledge can enter the RWS mechanism:
knowledge → measurement → standardization → finance → governance
Measurement does not create material conditions.
It transforms them into forms that organizations can process.
This distinction is important: materiality is not reducible to knowledge, but the societal relevance of material conditions is shaped by particular modes of observation and measurement.
Organizations and Materiality
Organizations operate under material constraints and participate in transforming material conditions.
Municipal administrations depend on existing infrastructures when planning services.
Companies evaluate resource deposits, transport systems and energy availability.
Environmental agencies observe ecological conditions through monitoring and regulation.
Universities produce knowledge about material environments.
Community organizations may mobilize around access to land, water or natural resources.
Organizational decisions therefore both respond to and modify material conditions.
Material Persistence
Material structures may persist longer than the decisions that created them.
A road, dam, industrial complex, mining pit, port or urban settlement can continue shaping regional development long after the original programme, investment decision or political coalition has disappeared.
This persistence introduces an important temporal dimension into regional development.
Past decisions can become materially sedimented.
Such material structures may create:
- opportunities,
- constraints,
- dependencies,
- maintenance obligations,
- environmental liabilities,
- and path dependencies.
Materiality therefore contributes to the historical accumulation of regional structures.
Materiality and Asymmetry
Material conditions are unevenly distributed.
Regions differ in:
- infrastructure quality,
- accessibility,
- resource endowments,
- ecological vulnerability,
- technological capacity,
- and exposure to environmental risks.
These differences interact with organizational and institutional capacities.
A region may possess valuable natural resources but lack the organizational capacity to capture the resulting benefits.
Another may possess strong infrastructure and administrative capacity but face severe ecological constraints.
Material asymmetries therefore intersect with financial, organizational and knowledge asymmetries.
Example: Mining
Mining illustrates the interaction between material conditions and societal processes particularly clearly.
Mineral deposits constitute a material condition.
Their existence alone, however, does not create a mining economy.
Extraction depends on:
- geological knowledge,
- technology,
- commodity prices,
- investment,
- licensing,
- infrastructure,
- labour,
- energy,
- and organizational decisions.
Once extraction begins, it may transform material conditions through roads, railways, pits, waste structures, urban expansion and altered water systems.
Mining therefore demonstrates how material conditions shape societal possibilities while simultaneously being transformed through regionalization.
Example: Coastal Climate Governance
Coastal regions provide another example.
Sea-level rise, erosion, storm exposure and mangrove ecosystems constitute materially differentiated conditions.
Their regional consequences depend on how they are observed and processed.
Climate models may identify risk.
Scientific studies may quantify ecosystem functions.
Governments may introduce adaptation programmes.
Funding agencies may finance protective infrastructure.
Communities may contest or reshape proposed interventions.
The resulting regional trajectory emerges from the interaction of material conditions, knowledge, organizations, finance and governance.
Materiality and Determinism
RWS explicitly rejects material determinism.
Material conditions do not determine societal development in a direct causal sense.
At the same time, they cannot be reduced to communication, representation or discourse.
Material conditions create real possibilities, constraints, resistances and consequences.
The analytical task is therefore to examine:
how material conditions enter societal observation and decision-making, how societal processes transform them, and how these interactions become regionally stabilized.
Materiality and Atmosphere
The concept of materiality forms part of the current RWS architecture.
The possible concept of atmosphere belongs to a more exploratory theoretical agenda.
It may offer a way to examine material conditions that are spatially diffuse, mobile, difficult to delimit or not easily attributable to particular organizations or territories.
Climate, air pollution, heat, humidity and atmospheric circulation are possible examples.
Whether atmosphere should become a distinct analytical category within RWS remains an open theoretical question.
It should therefore not yet be treated as equivalent to the canonical concept of materiality.
Analytical Questions
The concept directs empirical research toward questions such as:
- Which material conditions shape a regional transformation?
- How do these conditions become socially observable?
- Which organizations produce knowledge about them?
- How are material conditions classified, measured and valued?
- Which material conditions facilitate particular forms of territorialization?
- Which conditions constrain organizational action?
- How do existing infrastructures shape regionalization?
- Which material structures persist from earlier development trajectories?
- How do organizational decisions transform material environments?
- Which material conditions generate new dependencies or vulnerabilities?
- How do material and organizational asymmetries interact?
- Which ecological processes become connected to finance and governance?
- Where do material conditions resist or exceed existing organizational capacities?
Relation to RWS
Materiality is a core concept of Regional Development in World Society.
Within RWS, regions are understood as:
historically contingent configurations in which heterogeneous world-societal processes become selectively connected, organizationally stabilized, materially conditioned and institutionally condensed.
Materiality helps specify what is meant by materially conditioned.
Regional development takes place under differentiated ecological, infrastructural, technological and resource conditions that enable, constrain and shape societal processes without determining their outcomes.
Materiality therefore connects the analysis of world-societal processes to the concrete physical conditions under which selective territorialization and regionalization take place.
Related Concepts
Selective Territorialization →
Knowledge, Measurement & Decision Relevance →
Regional Capacities & Asymmetries →
Explore
Regional Development in World Society →
Conceptual note — part of the ongoing theoretical development of Regional Development in World Society (RWS).