Earthly volumes, voluminous materialities: working with apprehension

This editorial introduces the special issue 'Earthly Volumes, Voluminous Materialities: Working with Apprehension'. Situated within the volumetric turn while adopting voluminous approaches that critique how social and natural relations shape and are shaped by territory's multidimensionality, the issue's articles explore how state and non-state actors have sought to understand, grasp, and control emergent domains historically and into the present. These domains are not only volumetric but also virtual. Case studies, which draw on a rich array of theories and methods from fields such as feminist geopolitics, science and technology studies, and environmental history include cemeteries in Victorian England, Japanese imperial whaling, US libertarian seasteading in Tahiti, and Andean and lunar data centres. Four other case studies examine China, reflecting the planetary and even interplanetary scale of the world's second-most populous country. These papers consider the country's interventions in Nepal, Cambodia and the Arctic, along with its Mars simulation camps, bringing the celestial empire's manifold frontiers into relief. Throughout the special issue, there is a concern with apprehension writ three ways: first, the uncertainty that humbles efforts to cohere new volumes; second, the assurance and occasional hubris that comes from mastering them; and third, the violence bound up with arresting targets of interest. While 'securing the volume' seems ever more politically elusive in a world riven by war, pandemic, climate crisis and artificial intelligence, this special issue demonstrates the potential for the social sciences, arts and humanities to stay at the volume's vanguard.