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Contemporary human geography: fiddling while Rome burns?
Geoforum 34 (2003) 1–3 www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
Editorial
Contemporary human geography: fiddling while Rome burns?
The title of this editorial is deliberately designed to be provocative. But it reflects a deep seated concern on my part about the directions some parts of human geography, particularly cultural geography, have taken in recent years. In a nutshell, my concern is that the rise of a Ôpost-modernÕ human geography, with its stress on textuality and texts, deconstruction, critique, ÔreadingÕ and interpretation, has led human geography into a theoretical playground where its practitioners stimulate or entertain themselves and a handful of readers, but have in the process become increasingly detached from contemporary social issues and concerns. The risk is that much of human geography will cease to be taken seriously in the world beyond the narrow confines of academe. It will be seen simply as a corner of the postmodern theoretical playground, possibly entertaining to study for a while, but something which can be safely ignored while the grown ups get on with the business of changing the world, often for the worse. This set of concerns can, of course, be dismissed as reflecting a narrow preoccupation with some dreary seventies notion of ÔrelevanceÕ and empirical analysis at the expense of theoretical development and critique. It could also be argued that they reflect a very limited conception of the role of critical inquiry within academe and indeed of the role and purpose of academe itself. In an attempt to head off these criticisms, I should say that I am not arguing for a narrowly defined concept of human geographical research which has always to be Ôsocially relevantÕ in the sense of seeking to change the world in a direct sense by undertaking research for policy makers or opposing multi-national companies. Abstract theoretical or historical research can be even more significant in changing the world, as the work of Marx, Keynes and Friedman has clearly shown. The notion of a singular purpose for human geography or any other disciple fills me with alarm, not least because it immediately raises the issue of who sets the purpose/s and the possibility of limits to intellectual freedom of inquiry. If we want to avoid the Stalinist nightmares of the parameters of intellectual inquiry being set by the state and intellectual dissidents being banned, the major guiding principle for human geo-
graphy or any other discipline has to be one of total freedom of intellectual inquiry. If we start from this premise it follows that disciplines can and should evolve where their practitioners wish to take them, in any direction they find interesting and fruitful. This commitment to complete freedom of intellectual inquiry does not, however, rule out the desirability of practitioners asking one another whether what they are doing is useful, fruitful or productive even though the social or intellectual values attached to these terms vary substantially. It is important to do so, not least because all disciplines are prey to intellectual fashions that, once they take hold, can prove both powerful and difficult to break. Viewed retrospectively, each era has its own distinctive set of intellectual interests and concerns which to a large extent reflect the social issues, theoretical concerns and political economy of the age. Human geography is not exempt from this generalisation. Looking back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, western geography was, not surprisingly, primarily concerned with issues of discovery, exploration and mapping, all of which were linked to the expansion of empires. Human geographers grappled with questions of differences in economy, habit and culture, the relationship between physical environment and development and the character of the region. Subsequently, the 1960s and early 1970s were characterised by what can be seen in retrospect, as the era of high modernism, with its rejection of old style descriptive regional geography, and an emphasis on science, theory and quantification. This was the era of abstract spatial analysis and represented the high water mark of positivism and quantitative methods. Although David Harvey stressed the importance of theory in the development of scientific geography, in retrospect, the interest often seemed to be in the development and application of quantitative methods for their own sake. The Vietnam War and the wave of student demonstrations of the late 1960s brought to geography a new era of social and academic concern with issues of social justice and inequality. The critics, led by David Harvey in his influential Social Justice and the City (1973),
0016-7185/03/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 0 1 6 - 7 1 8 5 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 8 6 - 6
2
Editorial / Geoforum 34 (2003) 1–3
pointed to the fact that positivist, quantitative geography seemed more interested in the techniques of factorial analysis, trend surface analysis, Markov chains, multiple regression and the like than they did in substantive social issues. Spatial analysis and quantitative methods were abandoned in favour of Marxist analysis and the growing interest in the measurement and mapping of social deprivation and living standards. But Marxist geography in turn began to fade from favour in the mid 1980s, overtaken by an interest in post-modernism and the interpretative turn which rejected the Ômeta-narrativesÕ of grand theory in favour of theoretical and social deconstruction. It found new interests in the social construction of both subjects and of knowledge itself. Much previous human geography was rejected as being deterministic, empiricist, positivist, and subject to post-enlightenment conceptions of progress. At the same time, there has been a radical shift in the dominant methodology of much human geographical research. Quantitative techniques and aggregate social research have been largely abandoned, in favour of small scale, interpretative, qualitative, in-depth methodologies. Analysis of large data sets has become totally passe, the object of suspicion or even derision as ÔempiricistÕ. Arguably, methodological development has been characterised by a shift from much mindless quantification and measurement to an unquestioning use of qualitative techniques. How are we to interpret the utility of the new interests and approaches? While there can be no doubt that postmodernism, new cultural theory and the interpretative turn have generated a major intellectual resurgence in contemporary human geography, I am dubious of its intellectual utility and social value on three main grounds. First, the renewed interest in social theory and theorising has arguably generated an interest in Ôtheory for theoryÕs sakeÕ and Ôcritique for critiqueÕs sakeÕ. Rather than theory being seen primarily as a crucial tool to assist in the understanding of the world in which we live, Ôdoing theoryÕ has arguably become an object of attention in its own right, just as quantification became an object of interest in its own right in the late 1960s and 1970s. Second, while much recent cultural geography parades its radical credentials in terms of its concerns with deconstruction, conceptions of ÔdifferenceÕ and othernessÕ, giving voice to hitherto unheard minorities, allowing the subaltern to speak, and so on, it can be argued that in reality there has been a retreat from substantive political engagement and social analysis in favour of superficial academic radicalism. Critical geography is arguably something which is practiced more in the seminar room and on the pages of academic journals, than on a wider stage (Leyshon, 1995; Markusen, 1999; Martin, 2001a,b; Storper, 2001).
We live in an era in which the power and influence of large western companies has increased dramatically in terms of foreign investment, resource extraction, trade flows labour conditions, economic development and the like. Earnings, income and wealth inequality have increased dramatically over the last 20 years. At the top end the salaries, share options and remuneration packages of the economic elite who run the largest companies, or work in the financial sector have grown dramatically. At the bottom end, a large proportion of the population scrape by, living in deteriorated housing estates with low educational qualifications and subject to high levels of crime and violence. There are problems of low educational attainment, so-called ÔfailingÕ schools, high levels of unemployment, ill-health, and growing NHS waiting lists. At the international level, we live in an era of increasing globalisation, and of the dominance of major companies in global investment and trade, combined with high levels of international inequality. Large tracts of sub-Saharan Africa are blighted with low and falling living standards, famine and AIDS and environmental degradation is increasing in many countries. In parts of South East Asia, air pollution is now a major problem as a result of forest burning. Is contemporary human geography dealing with these issues on a serious basis? While there are clearly many honourable exceptions, some of which are found in the pages of Geoforum, the broad answer to this question seems to me to be Ônot as much as it should beÕ. Although there are many significant exceptions, such as work on unemployment, privatization, labor conditions, the geography of service withdrawal (e.g, banking and food outlets in the inner cities), FDI, multi-national companies and environmental issues, much contemporary human geography appears to be looking the other way, concerned more with deconstructing theory, the analysis of subjectivity and concepts of embodiment, and issues of representation than with major economic, political and social problems. There seems to be more attention paid to the representation and deconstruction of phenomena than in phenomena themselves. This reflects both the legacy of the post-modern belief that there is no meaning beyond the text and the privileged western interest with issues of identity and the self. Third, the post-modern rejection of notions of science, truth, objectivity and rigorous empirical analysis in favour of interpretation and deconstruction has arguably led to the rise of a new political, economic and social relativism which attaches little or no value to systematic empirical analysis and has permitted the rise of ad hoc qualitative impressionism. This is not an argument for the reintroduction of quantitative methods and large-scale empirical analysis. On the contrary, there is much to be said for mixed methods, combining the detailed insights of in-depth interviews and other
Editorial / Geoforum 34 (2003) 1–3
qualitative methods, with the use of quantitative analysis where appropriate. What concerns me is that a generation of human geography students are increasingly being brought up on a limited methodological diet of focus groups and discourse and textual analysis rather than the ability to interpret a table showing foreign investment. The ESRC 1 þ 3 PhD training programme is supposed to address this deficiency in part but whether or not it will succeed remains to be seen. Taken overall, there is an argument that parts of geography are the new intellectual dilettanti: relevance has been replaced by irrelevance, reality by representation and social criticism by theoretical critique. For some, contemporary human geography has become an arena for theoretical play, little more. Regrettably, such frothy theoretical constructions are likely to be viewed in the outside world as rather similar to the title of Boris VianÕs novel ÔThe Froth on the DaydreamÕ: nice to look at, nice to taste but insubstantial and not to be taken seriously. I hope, for geographyÕs sake, that this does not prove to be true.
3
References Harvey, D., 1973. Social Justice and the City. Edward Arnold, London. Leyshon, A., 1995. Missing words: Or whatever happened to the geography of poverty? Environment and Planning, A 27, 1021–1025. Markusen, A., 1999. Fuzzy concepts, scanty evidence and policy distance: The case for rigour and policy relevance in critical regional studies. Regional Studies 33, 869–886. Martin, R., 2001a. Geography and public policy: The case of the missing agenda. Progress in Human Geography 25 (2), 189–210. Martin, R., 2001b. The geographer as social critic––getting indignant about income inequality. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 26 (3), 267–272. Storper, M., 2001. The poverty of radical theory today: From the false promises of Marxism to the mirage of the cultural turn. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25 (1), 155–179.
Chris Hamnett Department of Geography KingÕs College University of London, Strand London WC2R 2LS, UK Tel.: +44-20-7848-2611; fax: +44-20-7848-2287 E-mail address: [email protected]
Editorial
Contemporary human geography: fiddling while Rome burns?
The title of this editorial is deliberately designed to be provocative. But it reflects a deep seated concern on my part about the directions some parts of human geography, particularly cultural geography, have taken in recent years. In a nutshell, my concern is that the rise of a Ôpost-modernÕ human geography, with its stress on textuality and texts, deconstruction, critique, ÔreadingÕ and interpretation, has led human geography into a theoretical playground where its practitioners stimulate or entertain themselves and a handful of readers, but have in the process become increasingly detached from contemporary social issues and concerns. The risk is that much of human geography will cease to be taken seriously in the world beyond the narrow confines of academe. It will be seen simply as a corner of the postmodern theoretical playground, possibly entertaining to study for a while, but something which can be safely ignored while the grown ups get on with the business of changing the world, often for the worse. This set of concerns can, of course, be dismissed as reflecting a narrow preoccupation with some dreary seventies notion of ÔrelevanceÕ and empirical analysis at the expense of theoretical development and critique. It could also be argued that they reflect a very limited conception of the role of critical inquiry within academe and indeed of the role and purpose of academe itself. In an attempt to head off these criticisms, I should say that I am not arguing for a narrowly defined concept of human geographical research which has always to be Ôsocially relevantÕ in the sense of seeking to change the world in a direct sense by undertaking research for policy makers or opposing multi-national companies. Abstract theoretical or historical research can be even more significant in changing the world, as the work of Marx, Keynes and Friedman has clearly shown. The notion of a singular purpose for human geography or any other disciple fills me with alarm, not least because it immediately raises the issue of who sets the purpose/s and the possibility of limits to intellectual freedom of inquiry. If we want to avoid the Stalinist nightmares of the parameters of intellectual inquiry being set by the state and intellectual dissidents being banned, the major guiding principle for human geo-
graphy or any other discipline has to be one of total freedom of intellectual inquiry. If we start from this premise it follows that disciplines can and should evolve where their practitioners wish to take them, in any direction they find interesting and fruitful. This commitment to complete freedom of intellectual inquiry does not, however, rule out the desirability of practitioners asking one another whether what they are doing is useful, fruitful or productive even though the social or intellectual values attached to these terms vary substantially. It is important to do so, not least because all disciplines are prey to intellectual fashions that, once they take hold, can prove both powerful and difficult to break. Viewed retrospectively, each era has its own distinctive set of intellectual interests and concerns which to a large extent reflect the social issues, theoretical concerns and political economy of the age. Human geography is not exempt from this generalisation. Looking back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, western geography was, not surprisingly, primarily concerned with issues of discovery, exploration and mapping, all of which were linked to the expansion of empires. Human geographers grappled with questions of differences in economy, habit and culture, the relationship between physical environment and development and the character of the region. Subsequently, the 1960s and early 1970s were characterised by what can be seen in retrospect, as the era of high modernism, with its rejection of old style descriptive regional geography, and an emphasis on science, theory and quantification. This was the era of abstract spatial analysis and represented the high water mark of positivism and quantitative methods. Although David Harvey stressed the importance of theory in the development of scientific geography, in retrospect, the interest often seemed to be in the development and application of quantitative methods for their own sake. The Vietnam War and the wave of student demonstrations of the late 1960s brought to geography a new era of social and academic concern with issues of social justice and inequality. The critics, led by David Harvey in his influential Social Justice and the City (1973),
0016-7185/03/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 0 1 6 - 7 1 8 5 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 8 6 - 6
2
Editorial / Geoforum 34 (2003) 1–3
pointed to the fact that positivist, quantitative geography seemed more interested in the techniques of factorial analysis, trend surface analysis, Markov chains, multiple regression and the like than they did in substantive social issues. Spatial analysis and quantitative methods were abandoned in favour of Marxist analysis and the growing interest in the measurement and mapping of social deprivation and living standards. But Marxist geography in turn began to fade from favour in the mid 1980s, overtaken by an interest in post-modernism and the interpretative turn which rejected the Ômeta-narrativesÕ of grand theory in favour of theoretical and social deconstruction. It found new interests in the social construction of both subjects and of knowledge itself. Much previous human geography was rejected as being deterministic, empiricist, positivist, and subject to post-enlightenment conceptions of progress. At the same time, there has been a radical shift in the dominant methodology of much human geographical research. Quantitative techniques and aggregate social research have been largely abandoned, in favour of small scale, interpretative, qualitative, in-depth methodologies. Analysis of large data sets has become totally passe, the object of suspicion or even derision as ÔempiricistÕ. Arguably, methodological development has been characterised by a shift from much mindless quantification and measurement to an unquestioning use of qualitative techniques. How are we to interpret the utility of the new interests and approaches? While there can be no doubt that postmodernism, new cultural theory and the interpretative turn have generated a major intellectual resurgence in contemporary human geography, I am dubious of its intellectual utility and social value on three main grounds. First, the renewed interest in social theory and theorising has arguably generated an interest in Ôtheory for theoryÕs sakeÕ and Ôcritique for critiqueÕs sakeÕ. Rather than theory being seen primarily as a crucial tool to assist in the understanding of the world in which we live, Ôdoing theoryÕ has arguably become an object of attention in its own right, just as quantification became an object of interest in its own right in the late 1960s and 1970s. Second, while much recent cultural geography parades its radical credentials in terms of its concerns with deconstruction, conceptions of ÔdifferenceÕ and othernessÕ, giving voice to hitherto unheard minorities, allowing the subaltern to speak, and so on, it can be argued that in reality there has been a retreat from substantive political engagement and social analysis in favour of superficial academic radicalism. Critical geography is arguably something which is practiced more in the seminar room and on the pages of academic journals, than on a wider stage (Leyshon, 1995; Markusen, 1999; Martin, 2001a,b; Storper, 2001).
We live in an era in which the power and influence of large western companies has increased dramatically in terms of foreign investment, resource extraction, trade flows labour conditions, economic development and the like. Earnings, income and wealth inequality have increased dramatically over the last 20 years. At the top end the salaries, share options and remuneration packages of the economic elite who run the largest companies, or work in the financial sector have grown dramatically. At the bottom end, a large proportion of the population scrape by, living in deteriorated housing estates with low educational qualifications and subject to high levels of crime and violence. There are problems of low educational attainment, so-called ÔfailingÕ schools, high levels of unemployment, ill-health, and growing NHS waiting lists. At the international level, we live in an era of increasing globalisation, and of the dominance of major companies in global investment and trade, combined with high levels of international inequality. Large tracts of sub-Saharan Africa are blighted with low and falling living standards, famine and AIDS and environmental degradation is increasing in many countries. In parts of South East Asia, air pollution is now a major problem as a result of forest burning. Is contemporary human geography dealing with these issues on a serious basis? While there are clearly many honourable exceptions, some of which are found in the pages of Geoforum, the broad answer to this question seems to me to be Ônot as much as it should beÕ. Although there are many significant exceptions, such as work on unemployment, privatization, labor conditions, the geography of service withdrawal (e.g, banking and food outlets in the inner cities), FDI, multi-national companies and environmental issues, much contemporary human geography appears to be looking the other way, concerned more with deconstructing theory, the analysis of subjectivity and concepts of embodiment, and issues of representation than with major economic, political and social problems. There seems to be more attention paid to the representation and deconstruction of phenomena than in phenomena themselves. This reflects both the legacy of the post-modern belief that there is no meaning beyond the text and the privileged western interest with issues of identity and the self. Third, the post-modern rejection of notions of science, truth, objectivity and rigorous empirical analysis in favour of interpretation and deconstruction has arguably led to the rise of a new political, economic and social relativism which attaches little or no value to systematic empirical analysis and has permitted the rise of ad hoc qualitative impressionism. This is not an argument for the reintroduction of quantitative methods and large-scale empirical analysis. On the contrary, there is much to be said for mixed methods, combining the detailed insights of in-depth interviews and other
Editorial / Geoforum 34 (2003) 1–3
qualitative methods, with the use of quantitative analysis where appropriate. What concerns me is that a generation of human geography students are increasingly being brought up on a limited methodological diet of focus groups and discourse and textual analysis rather than the ability to interpret a table showing foreign investment. The ESRC 1 þ 3 PhD training programme is supposed to address this deficiency in part but whether or not it will succeed remains to be seen. Taken overall, there is an argument that parts of geography are the new intellectual dilettanti: relevance has been replaced by irrelevance, reality by representation and social criticism by theoretical critique. For some, contemporary human geography has become an arena for theoretical play, little more. Regrettably, such frothy theoretical constructions are likely to be viewed in the outside world as rather similar to the title of Boris VianÕs novel ÔThe Froth on the DaydreamÕ: nice to look at, nice to taste but insubstantial and not to be taken seriously. I hope, for geographyÕs sake, that this does not prove to be true.
3
References Harvey, D., 1973. Social Justice and the City. Edward Arnold, London. Leyshon, A., 1995. Missing words: Or whatever happened to the geography of poverty? Environment and Planning, A 27, 1021–1025. Markusen, A., 1999. Fuzzy concepts, scanty evidence and policy distance: The case for rigour and policy relevance in critical regional studies. Regional Studies 33, 869–886. Martin, R., 2001a. Geography and public policy: The case of the missing agenda. Progress in Human Geography 25 (2), 189–210. Martin, R., 2001b. The geographer as social critic––getting indignant about income inequality. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 26 (3), 267–272. Storper, M., 2001. The poverty of radical theory today: From the false promises of Marxism to the mirage of the cultural turn. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25 (1), 155–179.
Chris Hamnett Department of Geography KingÕs College University of London, Strand London WC2R 2LS, UK Tel.: +44-20-7848-2611; fax: +44-20-7848-2287 E-mail address: [email protected]