Non-representational theory is an academic approach that animates the active world; its taking-place. It shows how material, sensory and affective processes combine with conscious thought and agency in the making of everyday life. This book offers an agenda for health geography, providing the first comprehensive overview of what a ‘more-than-representational’ health geography looks like. It outlines the basis of a new ontological understanding of health, and explores the key qualities of ‘movement-space’ that are critical to how health emerges within the assemblages that enable it. It shows how non-representational events and concerns are key to human happiness and wellbeing, to the experience of health and disease, to activities that add to or detract from health and to health care work, not to mention to the broader initiatives and operation of health institutions and health sciences. This book bridges the gap between non-representational theory and health research, and provides the groundwork for future developments in the field. It will be of interest to students, researchers and professionals alike working in health, geography and a range of other disciplines.

Drawing on the principles, approaches and style of non-representational theory, Gavin J. Andrews sets out a new agenda for health geography, offering a fundamental consideration of how health actually locates and plays out in the taking place, the frontier, of life.

Emerging over the past ten years from a set of post-structuralist theoretical lineages, non-representational theories are having a major impact within Human Geography. Non-representational theorisation and research has opened up new sets of problematics around the body, practice and performativity and inspired new ways of doing and writing human geography that aim to engage with the taking-place of everyday life. Drawing together a range of innovative contributions from leading writers, this is the first book to provide an extensive and in-depth overview of non-representational theories and human geography. The work addresses the core themes of this still-developing field, demonstrates the implications of non-representational theories for many aspects of human geographic thought and practice, and highlights areas of emergent critical debate. The collection is structured around four thematic sections - Life, Representation, Ethics and Politics - which explore the varied relations between non-representational theories and contemporary human geography.

Non-representational Theory explores a range of ideas which have recently engaged geographers and have led to the development of an alternative approach to the conception, practice, and production of geographic knowledge. Non-representational Theory refers to a key body of work that has emerged in geography over the past two and a half decades that emphasizes the importance of practice, embodiment, materiality, and process to the ongoing formation of social life. This title offers the first sole-authored, accessible introduction to this work and its impact on geography. Without being prescriptive the text provides a general explanation of what Non-representational Theory is. This includes discussion of the disciplinary context it emerged from, the key ideas and themes that characterise work associated with Non-representational Theory, and the theoretical points of reference that inspires it. The book then explores a series of conjunctions of ‘Non-representational Theory and...’, taking an area of geographic enquiry and exploring the impact Non-representational Theory has had on how it is researched and understood. This includes the relationships between Non-representational Theory and Practice, Affect, Materiality, Landscape, Performance, and Methods. Critiques of Non-representational Theory are also broached, including reflections on issues on identity, power, and difference. The text draws together the work of a range of established and emerging scholars working on the development of non-representational theories, allowing scholars from geography and other disciplines to access and assess the animating potential of such work. This volume is essential reading for undergraduates and post-graduate students interested in the social, cultural, and political geographies of everyday living.

Utilising non-representational theories and practice-led research methods, this book serves to reclaim therapeutics as ecological, spatial and material. It examines the sites and performances of a wide range of therapeutic art practices, including painting and drawing, dance movement therapy, fibre art, subterranean graffiti practice, and poetic permaculture. In doing so it provides an important assessment of the role and status of therapy in contemporary life. A highly interdisciplinary text, Boyd’s research is informed by a thorough reading of post-structural theory including contemporary feminism, Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm, Whitehead’s process-oriented ontology, and Deleuze’s writing on sense and the event. This innovative study will prove essential for scholars and practitioners of cultural geography, socially-engaged art, therapeutic studies, and occupational therapy.

This book presents distinct perspectives from both geographically-oriented creative practices and geographers working with arts-based processes. In doing so, it fills a significant gap in the already sizeable body of non-representational discourse by bringing together images and reflections on performances, art practice, theatre, dance, and sound production alongside theoretical contributions and examples of creative writing. It considers how contemporary art making is being shaped by spatial enquiry and how geographical research has been influenced by artistic practice. It provides a clear and concise overview of the principles of non-representational theory for researchers and practitioners in the creative arts and, across its four sections, demonstrates the potential for non-representational theory to bring cultural geography and contemporary art closer than ever before.