Introduction: Human Geography, Social Change and Social Science
Chapter – 1
Table of Contents
- Social theories eventually become obsolete as unforeseen historical events unfold.
- Reconstruction follows the failure of outdated theoretical frameworks.
- We may be on the brink of a new social epoch requiring new categories and discourses.
- This new epoch challenges the modernist perspectives of Marxism and pluralism.
- Future social theory will likely involve inconclusive competition among theoretical traditions.
- There will be a mix of post-modernist disruption and modernist retrenchment.
- Theoretical ground-rules for comparison and assessment will be in flux.
Changing Concepts in a Changing World
- Social and political sciences increasingly recognize a critical historical transition.
- Modern society is seen as on the brink of a new reality, requiring new theoretical frameworks.
- Debate exists whether this era is exceptional or just perceived as such due to end-of-century sentiments.
- Predominant belief: current times mark a major transition in global socio-economic and geopolitical development.
- Significant changes include global capitalism upheaval, increased globalization, collapse of state socialism, ethnic resurgence, new regulatory systems, and environmentalism.
- McLennan suggests this new epoch necessitates reexamining accepted theories.
- Contemporary social science feels disoriented, eager to move beyond postwar paradigms.
- Human geography is deeply involved in this intellectual shift, leading reappraisals and explorations.
- Continuous development and rethinking have characterized human geography for three decades.
- The 1960s: ‘new geography’ replaced ‘areal differentiation’ with a focus on quantitative techniques and spatial science.
- The 1970s: criticism of positivistic locational analysis led to alternative approaches, notably the ‘Marxist turn’.
- Marxism’s influence spread across social sciences, impacting human geography with emphasis on political economy and capitalism’s ‘laws of motion’.
- David Harvey’s work shifted human geography from statistical laws to historical and material processes of urban and regional development.
- Marxist geography, with various forms and coexisting with other approaches, dominated by the early 1980s.
- The recent wave of debate and reappraisal has followed, continuing the evolution of human geography.
- Recent wave of rethinking in human geography significant for scrutinizing and rejecting Marxism.
- Radical postpositive human geography is being reassessed, leading to disarray, exploration, and debate.
- Lack of consensus on research procedures, theoretical approaches, relevant theories, language, and subject matter.
- Diverse critiques and new insights vie for attention.
- Signs of turmoil and redirection across human geography: proliferation of new models, search for new horizons, and various proposals for remodelling.
- Numerous descriptors for recent movements: post-Marxist, poststructuralist, critical-realist, structurationist, feminist, postmodernist.
- Early fears of fragmentation in the subject, seen as branching towards anarchy with specialized formulations.
- Others see multiplicity of approaches as opportunities for renewed human geography or foundations for postmodern reconstruction.
- Clear that modernist ambience has been punctured, leading to epistemological relativism and methodological pluralism.
- Coherence of intellectual fragmentation is a central issue of contention.
- Similar turmoil across social sciences and humanities: intellectual experimentation, self-appraisal, blurring of boundaries and genres.
- Widespread interdisciplinary conversations and multidisciplinary nature of disciplines.
- Rigorous questioning of privileged terms like Philosophy, Science, Theory, History.
- Authority of these terms being interrupted, social sciences traditionally deferential to philosophers now seeking dialogue.
- End of ‘Philosophy with a capital P’ leads to more modest philosophical tasks involving dialogue and complication.
- Science no longer on a pedestal; rich history, sociology, ethnography, and poetics of science reveal it as a social practice.
- Space for investigating what geographers do versus what they claim to do.
- Theory reappraised; critique of empiricism remains, but imperialism of ‘Grand Theory’ questioned.
- Theoretical work now focuses on transgressive possibilities, enlarging critical imaginations.
- Suspicion of self-sufficient metanarratives and unproblematic access to singular truth.
- Radical doubt heralds the end of a history centered on ‘the West’.
- Clifford Geertz identified ‘blurring of the genres’ in social thought, recasting the critical imagination.
- Significant dismantling of barriers between social sciences and humanities.
- Exploration of ‘little-p’ philosophies addressing relations between philosophy and literature, viewing philosophy as a form of writing.
- Acknowledgment of textuality in science, treating theory as a guerilla discourse, and examining conceptions of human subjectivity and agency.
- Explosion of interest in cultural studies connected to Geertz’s concept of blurring genres.
- Social sciences drawing from cultural performance rather than physical manipulation, reflecting resurgence of cultural geography.
- Geertz’s phrasing risks reinstating culture vs. science opposition, while cultural studies address entanglements of culture, science, and technology in late-20th century capitalist modernity.
- Human geography’s technical sophistication in areas like cartography, remote sensing, spatial science, GIS, and association with physical geography highlights the need to reflect on cultural politics of these technologies.
- Cultural turn impacts academic reading and writing: text and image interrogation, language use, representation strategies.
- Not confined to cultural geography or cultural studies, but informs broader inquiries.
- Third theme: spatialisation of critical inquiry, highlighting the materiality of place, space, landscape, location.
- Henri Lefebvre’s account of La production de l’espace emphasizes metaphorisation and its consequences, urging attention to materiality.
- Critical responses to geographies of postmodernity focus on politics of vision and socially produced space.
- Neil Smith’s concept of ‘spatial difference that is not fragmentation’ intersects with the situatedness of knowledge.
- Invocations of difference and processes of othering emphasize partiality of viewpoints and positionality.
- Feminism and postcolonialism challenge traditional Western intellectual inquiry and impact public culture.
- Geography’s complicity in colonialism invites postcolonial critique and unlearning, contributing to broader understanding.
- Themes of cultural turn, spatialisation, and situated knowledge influence current human geography discourse.
- Aim not to create new orthodoxy but to assess key arguments and alternatives within the discipline.
- Importance of balancing enthusiasm for new ideas with caution to avoid unexamined dogmas.
- Novelty of new approaches must be critically assessed for genuine advancement in understanding.
- Postmodern turn in human geography opens space for creative enquiry but risks ignoring systemic social, political, economic structures.
- Synoptic or macro-conceptualisations needed to understand contemporary society’s organization, relations, practices, institutions, power structures.
- Both modern and postmodern theories necessary to grasp socio-economic development transitions and the changing present.
- Articulation of these theoretical approaches will shape human geography’s future direction.
Plan of the Book
- The central task of the following chapters is to enrich the understanding of the relationship between geography and the social sciences.
- The book is divided into two main parts to provide clear and justifiable coordinates for the reader.
- Part I focuses on the core components of the geographical world: the economy, polity, and society, and how theories of these interconnecting worlds aid geographical inquiries.
- The economy, polity, and society are traditionally seen as key sources of power and power relations within the social sciences.
- Understanding the constitution of the geographical world requires examining how economic, political, and social relations structure everyday life.
- Ron Martin’s chapter on economic theory and human geography addresses disruptions in the space economy since the 1970s.
- These disruptions include new informational and communication technologies, differentiated patterns of consumption, and renegotiation of economic markets and nation-states.
- The chapter critiques the rethinking of the space economy, including regulation theory and postmodernism.
- Key tasks include constructing a contextual economics and economic geography where socio-spatial embeddedness is central.
- Changes in the capitalist world economy have also reconstituted politics and the nation-state.
- Processes of globalization and local politics challenge the meaning of state sovereignty.
- Graham Smith’s chapter on political theory and human geography explores the need to rethink theories of the citizen-state, citizen-identity, and citizen-rights.
- Social movements renegotiating boundaries of citizenship illustrate these challenges, including ethnoregional and environmental movements.
- Social movements reflect differing socio-spatial contexts linked to social transformations in various parts of the world.
- Derek Gregory’s chapter explores the relationship between social theory and geographical enquiry.
- Geographical enquiries need to embrace richer and less Eurocentric theories.
- Geography as spatial science and Marxist geography often employed Eurocentric theoretical schemas emphasizing generality and detachment.
- Engagement with Marxism in geography was partly a response to spatial science’s failure to address social injustice.
- However, reliance on classical Marxism sometimes overlooked the importance of culture, morality, and politics.
- Rethinking social theory involves integrating historical materialism, structuration theory, and feminist theory for more engaging and committed geographies.
- Part II focuses on perspectives in geography that intersect economic, political, and social sources of power.
- The physical environment is central to understanding material conditions anchoring economic, political, and social power.
- Tim Bayliss-Smith and Susan Owens discuss geography’s position at the interface of physical and social sciences, claiming high ground for environmental-based research.
- Environmental debates in social sciences are explored, starting with the definition of ‘the environment.’
- The origins of environmentalism as a social movement are traced to a postmaterialist culture.
- Environmental problems and conflicts must be treated with geographical differentiation, illustrated with Third World and First World examples.
- The utility of formal techniques in environmental-based research, such as environmental impact assessment, is examined.
- Linda McDowell examines cultural geography, highlighting Carl Sauer’s legacy and the material conception of culture in reading and interpreting landscapes.
- Cultural landscapes also hold symbolic meanings, lending themselves to interpretative analysis.
- Geographers’ interest in cultural studies includes focus on place and shared meanings from local to national scales.
- New socioeconomic practices in Western societies have redefined traditional meanings of place, leading to new cultural politics reflective of postmaterialist values.
- Morag Bell critiques the Eurocentric conception and theorization of the Third World, challenging spatial dualisms like north-south and core-periphery.
- A postcolonial critique emphasizes sensitivity to differences and moving away from stereotypes.
- Understanding poverty and environmental issues requires recognizing diverse cultural, economic, and political practices and local geographies.
- The emergence of new social movements, such as environmentalism and feminism, calls for broader and redefined research agendas.
- Nigel Thrift’s chapter on regional geography stresses its centrality to human geography, highlighting different living contexts and interactions with the environment.
- Thrift structures his discussion around Vidal de la Blache, Karl Marx, and Fredric Jameson, connecting their ideas to current thinking on space and locality.
- Regional geographies must address the flux in regions due to globalization, media’s role in community imagination, and understanding ‘community.’
- Susan J. Smith’s chapter on urban studies argues for acknowledging urbanization’s complexities and conceptual overlaps.
- Urbanism is about differing conceptions of the city, examined through neo-Marxist and New Right perspectives.
- Neo-Marxist views need to incorporate gender and racial dynamics beyond class-based urban politics.
- The New Right sees urban problems as manageable through market policies and policing, contrasting with postmodernism’s focus on built form, consumption, and personal identities.
- Historical geography, or ‘geographical history,’ has evolved to focus on immaterial historical phenomena alongside material facts.
- Chris Philo discusses historical geography’s shift towards urban and rural protest movements, state operations, and spatial diffusion of innovations.
- Historical geography should bring sensitivity to place, space, distance, location, and region.
- Philo uses the example of ‘geographies of the mad business’ to illustrate the complexity of geographical history.
- Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘the spatialising of history’ or geographical history is explored, raising questions about knowledge and power.