Nathan Marom
Paris Institute for Advanced Study (2023-24) and Urban School, Science Po
In this presentation, I develop a set of reflections on metropolitan regions as a node, or rather a knot of metabolic entanglements across infrastructure systems, economic sectors, geographic scales, and political settings. These reflections are based on a wide-ranging multi-disciplinary literature alongside ideas and illustrations developed through my ongoing research on the metro-political ecologies of the Tel Aviv metropolitan region.
In particular, I draw on Ingold’s notions of “entanglements” (as distinct from networks) and “bindings” overcoming boundaries. Applying these ideas to a renewed study of urban metabolism, I propose a conceptual and methodological elaboration of metabolic entanglements as a distinct mode of inquiry to capture the multidimensional, multiscalar, multisectoral relations and exchanges between cities, regions, and planet in all their “messiness”. I position metabolic entanglements between, on the one hand, quantitative and technical approaches to sustainability that emphasize systems integration and efficiency (e.g. nexus, material flow analyses), and, on the other hand, more qualitative relational ideas stemming from STS (e.g. actor-networks and assemblages). This suggests an approach that is holistic (encompassing a wide range of metabolic domains and infrastructural systems); highly specific (embedded empirically in a particular urban context and polity); and explicitly political (invoking an expanded notion of politics that includes political ecology, political economy, geopolitics, national-ethnic conflict, climate justice, etc.)
I will illustrate these ideas – a work in progress – following several metabolic entanglements of the Tel Aviv metropolitan region, binding it far beyond its official boundaries to distant places and across scales, up to the planetary scale. These include mineral entanglements between regional stone quarries and global cement production; water-energy entanglements between desalination plants and offshore gas fields; and food entanglements related to port infrastructures and geostrategic trade corridors. Through these examples, I will also raise some methodological implications for thinking through entanglements, following specific flows and filaments (such as food or finance) in exploratory ways to wherever they may lead, and pursuing news stories into unexpected territories. In a world awash with boundless information and big data, this idiosyncratic approach may offer some methodological bindings.