Book Review: Mark B Salter (ed.), Making Things International 1: Circuits and Motion and Mark B Salter (ed.), Making Things International 2: Catalysts and Reactions
| Author | Ali Karimi |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1478929917714962 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsInternational Relations |
628 Political Studies Review 15(4)
that broad audience while simultaneously rein-
forcing her commitment to break the previously
hermetic mould of the discipline.
Ignas Kalpokas
(LCC International University and
Vytautas Magnus University)
© The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1478929917717446
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7Making Things International 1: Circuits and
Motion by Mark B Salter (ed.). Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. 363pp.,
£26.00 (p/b), ISBN 9780816696260
Making Things International 2: Catalysts and
Reactions by Mark B Salter (ed.). Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. 355pp.,
£26.00 (p/b), ISBN 9780816696307
International Relations meets French Theory in
Mark B. Salter’s Making Things International,
a two-volume edited collection of short essays
about the politics of material things – objects
from tank, tent and drone to currency, blood
and garbage. What ties all this assemblage of
things together is their international nature that
makes them local, national and global at the
same time. Each of the essays in these collec-
tions, written in an accessible language,
focuses on one single object and its relations to
the larger world of international politics. The
essays in the first volume are centred on the
theme of ‘Circuits and Motion’, covering a
range of objects that are associated with circu-
lation and the mobility of things and persons
across sovereign borders. In volume two, the
focus turns to ‘Catalysts and Reactions’, where
contributors examine a variety of objects that
are sites of a multitude of forces – political,
military and technological.
‘Environmental regimes cannot be under-
stood’ argues Salter in his introduction to vol-
ume one ‘without giving agency to the
nonhuman actants that make up the biosphere’
(1, p. vii). The idea of agency in environmental
materials is best explained by an essay on
Garbage by Michel Acuto and the essay on
Carbon by Chris Methmann and Benjamin
Stephan. We usually think of waste management
as a local task that municipalities deal with.
However, looking at the impact solid waste has
on our environment, the garbage we produce
every day is no longer a local issue but a global
object of significant relevance to international
relations, international trade and climate poli-
tics.
In Jairus Grove’s essay on Blood, this vital
fluid in the human body that has a long and
violent history and maintains layers of political
and cultural meanings, we learn about the com-
modification of blood by military institutions.
Grove examines the US Armed Services Blood
Program that treats blood as a military asset,
turning it from a ‘medium of medical interven-
tion to a national strategic resource’. In addi-
tion, we also learn how racialised scientific
research on blood helped shape the ideology of
racial superiority/inferiority in Nazi Germany.
In another essay, Can E. Mutlu discusses
international trade through the medium of
shipping containers. This dull metal box that
carries almost everything that is produced and
consumed is a critical part of the infrastructure
of global trade that facilitates the smooth
movement of goods across international bor-
ders. The container is a standardised object
which gives it a magical power to be handled
efficiently by any port in the world, or to be
carried on any transportation vehicle: ships,
trucks or trains.
Before the container, international shipping
of goods was difficult, slow and costly, and a
lot of time and money was spent on loading
and reloading ships and trucks in the ports. In
the 1950s, an American entrepreneur named
Purcell McLean introduced the idea of a closed
container to be carried by both ships and
trucks. It became hugely popular, but its lack of
standards still constrained trade. In 1963, the
International Standards Organisation issued a
set of rules to standardise the format, size and
dimensions of shipping containers. Nowadays,
containers are so important that we measure
the amount of international trade by twenty-
foot equivalent units (TEU) which is the stand-
ard size of a popular shipping container.
There are many great essays like these in
the books.
Taking a New Materialistic approach and
informed primarily by the works of French theo-
rist Bruno Latour, especially his Actor-Network
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