Whole Onflow: Processes of the World Materializing

This book describes ‘whole onflow’ which is, at once, the emergence and becoming of the entirety of the world/universe and any actual, unique position whatsoever in it ‘now’. A physical plane and self-organizing process that owes its energy to the Big Bang; in our region, it now unfolding the infinitely complex and varied world we engage, contribute to and experience.

There have been many academic ideas on the nature of emergence and becoming in the world, including ideas on the world’s overall emergence and becoming. In this book, we extend some of these ideas to conceptualize a physical plane incorporating all possible positions and local variability – all geographies - what we refer to as ‘whole onflow’. We answer some key questions including: What is the processual nature of whole onflow through which the world emerges and becomes in the moment? How might thinking in terms of whole onflow expand our ideas on the world’s productions from health, to ageing to capitalism and beyond? How might this help us get to grips with today’s kinetic, energy-dependent, multi-textured, and process-ignorant world? The book lays out the broad theoretical landscape. It demonstrates how principles and processes established by physics and cosmology might be combined with principles and processes conveyed by social theory to describe the world in whole onflow.

Dealing then with the very origins of all that is, and all that is social, the book is core reading for social scientists who like to think fundamentally. It is very much a speculative and provocative piece, but a necessary one, and will be of particular interest to those studying the world through poststructuralist, posthumanist, new materialist and non-representational theoretical lenses. Moving forward, certain scholars might follow the specific points of departure and pathways the book signposts. Others might choose to tread the new ground the book opens up in their own ways.

Gavin J. Andrews is Professor in the Department of Health, Aging and Society at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. He is also Associate Member of the School of Earth, Environment and Society at the same institution. Andrews is a human geographer with wide-ranging interests, particularly around issues of health and well-being. Much of his work is positional and considers the development, state-of-the-art and future of health and social geography. He is interested in fundamental ontological questions, drawing on posthumanist, new materialist and non-representational theory to answer those questions, to animate the emergence and vitality of the social world and to explain the compositions, processes and textures of space involved.

Cameron Duff is Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Organisations and Social Change in the College of Business and Law at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Duff’s programme of research explores the role of social innovation in driving social change in the community and not-for-profit sectors, with a focus on mental health care and social housing. Working at the intersection of political and organizational theory, Duff’s scholarship advances theoretical accounts of the ways social innovations emerge in response to complex social problems in urban settings, informed by close readings of the work of Gilles Deleuze, Elizabeth Grosz, Judith Butler, Manuel DeLanda, Bruno Latour and Michel Foucault.

Keith Woodward is Professor of Social Theory and Director of the School of Geography, Development, and Environment at the University of Arizona, the United States. He works at the intersections of affect theory, social and spatial theory, continental philosophy and social struggles. His early work helped to spark the so-called 'scale debates' in geography, and his contributions to site ontology form a key element in the discipline's ontological turn. He is interested in the work of Deleuze, Simondon, Badiou and others and is currently writing a monograph on Jean Genet and mereology.