Hybridity

Abstract

Hybridity indicates the combining and mixing of entities or domains that conventionally are thought of as separate or even opposed. Hybrid geographies involve attempts to theorize and engage with the social and natural world as intertwined and impossible to disentangle. Work under the banner of hybridity aims to break down the dualisms that structure life in modernity, such as subject/object, mind/body, material/symbolic, human/nonhuman, and science/politics. Looking at the world as a hybrid place has implications for politics and ethics, since science is no longer accorded a pure objective status and normative benchmarks associated with naturalness are lost when we acknowledge the coevolving character of our combined natural and social world.