Short Abstract

Thinking with other substances, the roundtable “places” the mineral and construction material sand alongside key industrial matters of historical relevance, such as charcoal, oil, or water. Together, participants ask how sand is moving people, institutions, and landscapes at global scale.

Long Abstract

Over the last decade, a growing number of studies examined political ecologies built on and with sand (Gesing 2021; Dawson 2023; Bachmann et al. 2026) with an interest in the interrelations of society and mineral matter. Academic work in this vein attended, in particular, to the devastating socio-ecological consequences of sand mining in the name of land reclamation (Lamb et al. 2019; Marschke & Rousseau 2022). Others focused on sand as aggregate (construction material or concrete ingredient) central to infrastructural development (Elinoff 2017; Choplin 2023). Yet, to this date, there is no systematic analysis of sand as vital matter of the Anthropocene. We believe that anthropology should play a role in how social science and the Humanities conceptualize sand, the second-most used resource after water. Thinking with other substances, the roundtable hopes to “place” sand alongside key industrial matter, such as charcoal (Walsh 2019), oil (Mitchell 2013), or water (Ballestero 2019). We invite panelists to think about recent ethnographic insights "at scale" to controversially discuss the place of sand in (un)making political ecologies, shaping polycrises, or political conflict. Sand’s varied existences will allow to reveal critical thresholds and points of entry where sand enters circuits of production and accumulation, interacts with other matter, or causes geological shifts that mediate and unsettle relations between people, institutions, and landscapes. Together, participants tackle the following questions: how does sand entangle people in historical shifts; how does the material’s own properties meet and conflict with the rhythms of markets, territorial governance, and political systems?