- Email: [email protected]
Diversity as strength?
POLITICAL
GEOGRAPHY
QUARTERLY,
Vol. 2, No. 1, January
1983, 81-87
Review essay Diversity
[A. Burnett and I?.J. Taylor: Political Studies from Spatial
as strength?
Perspectives (1981)]
It is the hope of the editors of this substantial collection that ‘it will point to key research directions in a revitalized political geography in the 1980s’ (p. viii). If their hope is realized then the book could be a very important one for political geography as a field, for those human geographers interested in the political aspects of societies, and for political scientists seeking a fruitful connection with a cognate discipline. Not only would the volume serve as an entree to contemporary political geography but it would also structure research in the coming years by having identified the ‘key directions’. The nature of the collection prejudices to a degree the realization of the editorial intent because of the diversity of approaches and subject material. It is indeed difficult to sort out the salient lineaments of future work from the array of essays, state-of-the-art reviews, and research reports. The whole venture would have been strengthened and the charting of future work made more feasible if the editors had provided a concluding essay which was both reflexive in relation to the preceding papers and directive in terms of providing some guidance for the decade ahead. Given their central role, they had a unique opportunity to make an important and needed statement and its omission can only be regretted. Correctly, the diversity of this book is seen as ‘a reflection of the pluralism [emphasis added] of contemporary political geography and indeed the social sciences’ (p. vii). Frankly, I would have preferred a more elitist posture on the part of the editors for, by letting the papers speak for themselves (more or less), political geography may be seen at best as having many tongues, at worst as a Tower of Babel (although I do not believe the field presently approximates the latter). There is an editorial reluctance to take hold of the collection (as it were) and impose their own sense of the contemporary well-being, issues and future directions of the subfield of political geography. Structure
and contents
Despite the absence of a ‘capstone’ essay, the volume does not lack organization, for the 22 papers are grouped on two dimensions, namely deductive-inductive and scale. Following two review essays in the first part, one moves generally (some might say loosely) from the deductive to the inductive in the remaining three sections, while within each section papers with a local orientation are followed by those at regional, national and global scales. The opening pair of essays reviewing political geography in Britain since Mackinder (Johnston) and in North America in the decade of the 70s (Minghi) stands as a useful benchmark and retrospective, though Johnston exhibits a particular bias away from the relevance of past work. In Part II, labelled ‘Orientations’, are a set of six thematic essays. Writing on the strangely 0260.9827/83/01
0081-07
$03.00
0 1983 Butterworth
& Co (Publishers)
Ltd
82
Review essay
underdeveloped (by geographers) themes of territory and power, Sack provides an important preliminary statement (I await his book on the subject with considerable anticipation for his essay is perhaps understandably thin in substantive applications, and the concept of power is scarcely dealt with adequately). Reynolds and his former student, Archer, both advocate the public choice approach to political studies because, they assert, it accounts for the existence of the state and its principal function-to make collective choices about the provision of public goods-a bold claim indeed. Reynolds in a thoughtful consideration of how social (collective) choices might be made by groups through the means of the state deals with two contrasting approaches, fiscal federalism and constitutional choice. He suggests the latter has more intrinsic interest for political geographers. Interestingly, this approach limitation
‘assumes only the existence of a minimal state’ (p. 97) which suggests a on its ability to explain many modern societies. Archer gives a useful if
somewhat uncritical introductory review of public choice theory; for example, he chooses not to discuss the relevance of the Pareto principle to advanced capitalist systems and the Tiebout hypothesis is presented in ahistorical terms, with little recognition that residential relocations between jurisdictions have more to do with housing needs, housing affordability and race relations, for example, than preferences for bundles of public goods at specific ‘prices’ (the original hypothesis and these comments are equally culturally bound to an American context). The methodological individualism of this approach is in marked contrast to the concern
with
institutions,
structures
and systems
in Clark’s
interesting
and, for
geographers, relatively original treatment of the relationships between democracy and the capitalist state. The section closes with a pair of essays set at the global scale. Brunn’s forward look to the geopolitics of the next century is no mean accomplishment, although of necessity somewhat uneven as 10 different scenarios are considered, while Taylor in a work he considers ‘basic and elementary’ essentially tries to connect the influential writings of Wallerstein on the world economy with political geography. In his proposed framework, the key actor is not the state but international capital, expressed organizationally as the transnational firm which structures the global space-economy and forces states to be fundamentally reactive example. Part III
with
respect
is hardest
to such
matters
to characterize-the
as trade, editors
tariffs,
and investment,
use the term
‘Agendas’,
for and
several specific directions do emerge. Dear, continuing his work in the ‘radical’ tradition, points to the urgent need for a theory of the local state although it is questionable if a general theory can be developed (the conceptual difficulties are revealed by Dear’s treatment of Canadian provinces as local states-a position that contradicts the essence of federalism-and the uneven comparisons that result when the local state in Britain is discussed). While not all will agree that what is needed is a materialist theory of the local state, the further development of this position will either elicit acceptance or require a convincing rebuttal by dissenters from the materialist view. Burnett’s thorough and organized review of local political outputs and outcomes in British and North American cities (overwhelmingly American though) ends with a clear statement of future research needs. A pervasive feature of political life in many contemporary societies is greater citizen participation and in a brief paper Kirby argues that studying planning inquiries (a central element of the British planning process) would be profitable in terms of a better understanding of the interests which are in conflict. The geography of local
Review essay
83
government has been a frequent topic in the recent literature and Honey’s work on local jurisdictional change in England (somewhat familiar through previous papers) is representative of this research. Here, the emphasis is on the human element in the formal evaluation process and how specific proposals correspond with stated principles. The lesson is that the outcome is primarily a function of the views held by principals in the party in ofice (my personal preference would have been to place this paper in the ‘Applications’ section). The distinctive contribution of Agnew’s original essay is to counterpose dialectical and structural theories in terms of their ability to explain political regionalism, a phenomenon of growing interest and of obvious significance to political geography. Favouring as he does the dialectical, Agnew indicates that political geographers (as social scientists) must choose between competing views of human agency-‘denial of the thinking/acting subject’ will lead to a preference for structural theorizing with determinist implications (a style certainly favoured by some co-contributors). Finally in this section, House breathes new life into frontier studies by developing an operational model to escape the trap of exceptionalism that has hampered such studies in the past, and Hall presents a fascinating exposition on how geographers might usefully study propaganda, something that too often is overlooked in the definition and formation of interests upon which we supposedly act in rational fashion (some interesting linkages between this work and the study of citizen participation and conflict over state planning suggest themselves here). The concluding section contains seven papers which are mostly empirical in nature. They connect in varying ways with a number of the preceding papers but also stand as independent works, especially those of Hudson and Williams which have theoretical prefaces. Williams’ essay on identity and autonomy as revealed through the separatist movement in Quebec, a superior work in its own right, complements Agnew’s essay well, though he leans more to structural theorizing. Hudson’s work needs to be emulated for it eschews the abstractions of many of his neo-Marxist cohorts and bravely attempts to situate the swings and vicissitudes of British transport policy in the acts of a state grappling with a rationality and legitimacy crisis (though it is debatable if the central actors that he deals with recognized this as their milieu). Electoral geography is represented at two very different levels of technical proficiency. The simple approach of Lemon to the geography of voting in recent South African elections is informative yet avoids the difficult inferential problems that beset studies such as O’Loughlin’s cross-national analysis which use aggregate data to study neighborhood or contextual effects that purportedly operate through the individual voter and his or her electoral choice (the individual electoral decision also being aggregated to a vote proportion). Three papers make indirect connection with Sack’s writing on territoriality: Paddison on the difficult task of identifying local political communities for the delivery of services and as an element in representative democracy (useful links here to Burnett and Clark); Rowley on Zionist colonization and settlement of what has become the state of Israel; and Brohman and Knight on the geopolitics of a conflict that has increasingly moved to center stage of late-Namibia/Southwest Africa. Each would serve to make specific and concrete to students the ideas and frameworks of earlier writings, both in this volume and elsewhere in political geography. Given the diversity of contributions as noted, finding a workable structure could not have been easy and the editors have succeeded in developing a sensible
84
Review essa2
combination from many possible permutations. Each of the four sections contains an editorial introduction and it is here that Burnett and Taylor come closest to making the kind of statements that the book badly needs at its close. Here too, in addition to helpful and admirably concise commentaries upon the papers which follow in each section, we find evidence of a profound division which currently bedevils political geography (and, I suspect, other subfields in geography). Selected issues arising Burnett and Taylor attempt a definition of the field-‘political geography is no more and no less than political studies carried out by geographers using the techniques and ideas ~sso~~ufe~lvdth [emphasis added] their spatial perspectives’ (p. 4). This conception, emphasized in the book’s title, certainly implies that geographers have something distinctive to offer in studying political behavior and structures----there is a geographica perspective (one could probably provoke an argument by querying the use of ‘spatial’ in preference to ‘geographic’: are we unsure of the essential meaning of the latter, whereas the former conveys a firmer conviction born out of locational analysis and the study of spatial organization?). But in the same introductory remarks to Part I and in the essay by Johnston, for example, the merit of techniques and ideas associated with the spatial perspective is questioned (by implication and by direction). Burnett and Taylor themselves point to the disagreement amongst political geographers ‘on fundamental issues’. While one dimension is the continuing relevance of ‘traditional’ views, the deepest division is with respect to basic political assumptions. The dichotomy is between ‘critical social theory’, building upon a broadly Marxist framework, and ‘traditional social theory’, including such schema as public choice theory. Thus what divide political geographers most acutely are ideas and modes of reasoning that are not strongly associated with space or location, or treat them more or less incidentally (e.g. the externality notion). Compounding this, we see Johnston (as characterized by the editors) urging political geographers to draw ‘techniques and ideas from other modern political studies’ (p. 7). Other papers exemplify this charge, at least in terms of ideas-notable examples are Clark, who uses the models of Downs and Tiebout as departure points for his ‘radical’ discussion of democracy and its relationship with the capitalist state through institutional arrangements, and Agnew, who explores the nature of structural and dialectical theories and applies these in cursory fashion to regionally based political movements (Spain, Scotland, Wales, Quebec). This raises what is to me at least a troubling question. In carrying out political studies, some geographers give little credence to techniques and ideas associated with spatial perspectives; yet by the lights of the editors this is the nub of political geography. How then will political geographers best advance their professional and disciplinary interests. 2 Will these be maximized by turning more and more to political and social theories and philosophies (many of which are ‘contested’, to paraphrase Lukes) and then applying the central concepts in specific places, perhaps in a comparative manner to deal directly with place to place or geographic variation, or through the skilful application of geographic ideas and associated techniques to the stuff of political life? For some it may not matter in which disciplinary context the intellectual mainsprings of political geography lie, but if they lie outside the accepted (?) confines of geography (no consensus here), then
Review essay
85
political geographers will have to demonstrate that their work is not simply a rehashing of that of others, served up for geographic consumption. They must show that theoretical frameworks that lack a geography are partial and limited; Reynolds, for one, seems to agree that ‘. . . these lines of inquiry are largely dead-ended without geographical analysis and elaboration’ (p. 97). Consider elections. At one level, they can be analysed for the spatial variations in outcomes per se with more or less sophisticated techniques. Again, the voting decision, it is asserted, can be decomposed in such a manner as to reveal the influence of interaction with proximate persons (or ‘neighbours’), giving rise to what are termed contextual effects. The paper by Lemon on voting patterns in South Africa and O’Loughlin’s four nation study illustrate well these approaches. For others, it is the message of the election that is important. Archer, for example, in enthusiastically presenting the public choice view, would appear to endorse the concept of the vote as purchase-by expressing approval on election day, for example, voters ratify the incumbents’ decisions on the bundle of goods and services (and their associated prices such as charges and taxes) which are publicly provided. Thus voting and its outcome are an integral feedback element in a systems-oriented view of political processes. For some ensconced in the ‘critical social theory’ camp, elections are an essential part of the mystification function of the state. The mass (or at least those who bother to vote) are socialized into believing that they are exercising their democratic rights, but the ‘deeper truth’ is that this periodic selection of rule makers from political elites is simply a process for deciding who sits in a legislature, an institution which is part of a state apparatus whose central task is the maintenance and reproduction of the capitalist system, not necessarily unchanged but with its fundamental relations in production undisturbed. Thus, the electoral stuggle between parties is a diversion and pales into insignificance in comparison to class struggles; as such, it is scarcely a worthwhile object of analysis. While this view is not specifically explicated in the papers by Dear and Clark, and is of necessity something of a caricature here, they both echo the general sentiment (see Clark: 127; Dear: 197-198). If one normally expects elections to be part of political studies, which of these contrasting and incompatible approaches is most representative of a spatial perspective? Some discussion of these approaches and their relative strengths and limitations is sorely needed for those who will confront political geography in the decade ahead, whether they be geographers ‘inside’ or, say, political scientists looking in from ‘outside’. The treatment of the state as an object of analysis is equally diverse in these papers and the reader may be left somewhat uncertain in the absence of any systematic treatment as to the potential utility of the state as a concept. As Taylor notes ‘. . . the state has been rediscovered largely through the efforts of the radical school of geographers’ (p. 158). What needs to be said, however, is that the conception of the state as represented to geographers is partial at best. While competing schools of thought are outlined (Dear’s essay), they are within the neo-Marxist framework. There are certainly other treatments of the state that must be presented to geographers if this phenomenon is to receive adequate scrutiny. In this volume alone, for example, we see the state as a territorial unit which functions to give concrete and legal expression to the ‘Promised Land’, a central symbol in Jewish thought and Zionism (Rowley); as a paradoxical entity in relation to nationalist movements-as in Williams’ essay on ethnic separatism in Quebec where the federal state of Canada symbolizes the culturally repressive, assimilating tendency,
86
Review essuy
whereas a new sovereign state, Quebec, would be the vehicle whereby FrenchCanadian nationalism might be legitimately represented and culturally liberated; as the creator of negative externalities on the landscape (Kirby); as numerous uncoordinated entities littering the world landscape and transcended by the key actors in a world economy, the transnational companies (Taylor). This listing is not exhaustive for the state is treated as a central element in other essays (e.g. Brunn, Hudson). Where the geographic perspective is most evident is in those instances where considerations of the state have an explicit territorial component. Sack contends rightly that geography (including political geography) has neglected territoriality and concentrated on interaction in terms of spatial analysis, part of geography’s major perspectives (p. 53). Yet the state is expressed in territorial terms and the history of many states has borne witness to the struggle by one group to extend effective control over other geographic areas, their occupants and resources-to make them, in Sack’s usage, territories. Citizenship follows from being born within a particular territory, and the complex linkages between allegiance, politicai obligation and nationalism find expression in people’s identification with places (in this volume, Agnew, Williams, Clark and Rowley are the most informative on these issues). Specific geographic areas are the object of territoriality (as a process) and, being real places, another central geographic perspective is revealed (again following Sack)--our relationship to nature. Interestingly, this perspective is absent from the present set of essays, although the politics of the environment would seem to be a logical area for inclusion and particularly appealing to political geographers as geographers. Taking resources as part of nature, however, means that certain of the geopolitical considerations do reflect this perspective, if somewhat indirectly (the Brohman~Knight paper on Namibia, Taylor’s comments on the North-South axis, and certain of Brunn’s scenarios). Finally, in terms of issues arising, two comments on the possibility of yet more diversity can be made. If diversity is taken as a strength (the editorial position) and as reflecting the various competing intellectual frameworks in the discipline, then one entrant that might be expected would be a political study by a geographer utilizing an experiential stance. This would yield insight into the relational qualities of power, authority and even coercion. A central theme of modern life is man’s alienation from the state, notably its bureaucratic apparatus or institutions (a theme that transcends capitalism, incidentally). Perhaps a ‘humanistic’ study of selected individuals as they confront a socially constructed institution, yet not of their making, would be revealing, much as recent work in social geography utilizing this approach has yielded insight into human behavior. Secondly, political studies by geographers (and others) will require a pronounced historical cast. The connection between political geography and history was stronger in earlier eras and suffered in the heyday of locational analysis of political systems (see also Johnston: 28). While certain authors dispute the potential of links to political science (contrast Johnston’s position with that of Kirby-‘political science has not provided geography with many sources of inspiration’), the need for work soundly based in historical context remains. House, Hall and Rowley among the present authors demonstrate sensitivity to this issue. Also, Taylor’s essay makes it clear that political geographers will need a sound historical base to interpret and apply the work of Wallerstein and his followers, and his critics. Who can comprehend Northern Ireland or Quebec without a historical appreciation? Or, again,
Review es.ray
87
investments in transportation are enormously durable, and among the real constraints on British transport planners are the tangible legacies of canal, rail and turnpike entrepreneurs and promoters of bygone years. They define one dimension of the milieu in which policies and programs are debated and implemented and their origin and geographical structuring cannot be ignored-even if taken as given, the reality that confronts us is historically constructed. In guarding against the poverty of historicism, we cannot afford to become ahistorical as we have been apolitical. Conclusion I strongly recommend this volume, despite its flaws, and the editors and contributors are to be commended for a timely and professional enterprise. Together with a judicious selection of other works, it can serve as the basic reading in advanced courses in political geography. The student will thus be introduced to a diverse and potentially bewildering set of views and perspectives. The burden on the teacher/instructor will indeed be considerable, but I agree with the editors that the task will be rewarding. The integration of this set of essays, together with the materials in this journal, into curricula, will surely act as a catalyst for more research and study. The new generation of political geographers will never again be cut off from the contested ideas of contemporary social thought and practice. The bridges built by the authors of these various essays will not readily be dismantled or discarded though students will inevitably follow certain directions more than others. Two major debates will be likely. One will be over how best to comprehend the existence and nature of the state and the second debate will almost certainly be over the nature of an explicitly spatial or geographic perspective(s) and its relevance for political study, an issue that this volume tends to take for granted rather than confront directly. No less than the material it studies will political geography in the 80s be free from conflict. John Mercer Department of Geography Syracuse University New York 13210, USA Reference BURNETT, A. AND TAYLOR, P.J. (1981). Wiley.
Political Studier from Spatial Perspectives. Chichester,
Sussex:
GEOGRAPHY
QUARTERLY,
Vol. 2, No. 1, January
1983, 81-87
Review essay Diversity
[A. Burnett and I?.J. Taylor: Political Studies from Spatial
as strength?
Perspectives (1981)]
It is the hope of the editors of this substantial collection that ‘it will point to key research directions in a revitalized political geography in the 1980s’ (p. viii). If their hope is realized then the book could be a very important one for political geography as a field, for those human geographers interested in the political aspects of societies, and for political scientists seeking a fruitful connection with a cognate discipline. Not only would the volume serve as an entree to contemporary political geography but it would also structure research in the coming years by having identified the ‘key directions’. The nature of the collection prejudices to a degree the realization of the editorial intent because of the diversity of approaches and subject material. It is indeed difficult to sort out the salient lineaments of future work from the array of essays, state-of-the-art reviews, and research reports. The whole venture would have been strengthened and the charting of future work made more feasible if the editors had provided a concluding essay which was both reflexive in relation to the preceding papers and directive in terms of providing some guidance for the decade ahead. Given their central role, they had a unique opportunity to make an important and needed statement and its omission can only be regretted. Correctly, the diversity of this book is seen as ‘a reflection of the pluralism [emphasis added] of contemporary political geography and indeed the social sciences’ (p. vii). Frankly, I would have preferred a more elitist posture on the part of the editors for, by letting the papers speak for themselves (more or less), political geography may be seen at best as having many tongues, at worst as a Tower of Babel (although I do not believe the field presently approximates the latter). There is an editorial reluctance to take hold of the collection (as it were) and impose their own sense of the contemporary well-being, issues and future directions of the subfield of political geography. Structure
and contents
Despite the absence of a ‘capstone’ essay, the volume does not lack organization, for the 22 papers are grouped on two dimensions, namely deductive-inductive and scale. Following two review essays in the first part, one moves generally (some might say loosely) from the deductive to the inductive in the remaining three sections, while within each section papers with a local orientation are followed by those at regional, national and global scales. The opening pair of essays reviewing political geography in Britain since Mackinder (Johnston) and in North America in the decade of the 70s (Minghi) stands as a useful benchmark and retrospective, though Johnston exhibits a particular bias away from the relevance of past work. In Part II, labelled ‘Orientations’, are a set of six thematic essays. Writing on the strangely 0260.9827/83/01
0081-07
$03.00
0 1983 Butterworth
& Co (Publishers)
Ltd
82
Review essay
underdeveloped (by geographers) themes of territory and power, Sack provides an important preliminary statement (I await his book on the subject with considerable anticipation for his essay is perhaps understandably thin in substantive applications, and the concept of power is scarcely dealt with adequately). Reynolds and his former student, Archer, both advocate the public choice approach to political studies because, they assert, it accounts for the existence of the state and its principal function-to make collective choices about the provision of public goods-a bold claim indeed. Reynolds in a thoughtful consideration of how social (collective) choices might be made by groups through the means of the state deals with two contrasting approaches, fiscal federalism and constitutional choice. He suggests the latter has more intrinsic interest for political geographers. Interestingly, this approach limitation
‘assumes only the existence of a minimal state’ (p. 97) which suggests a on its ability to explain many modern societies. Archer gives a useful if
somewhat uncritical introductory review of public choice theory; for example, he chooses not to discuss the relevance of the Pareto principle to advanced capitalist systems and the Tiebout hypothesis is presented in ahistorical terms, with little recognition that residential relocations between jurisdictions have more to do with housing needs, housing affordability and race relations, for example, than preferences for bundles of public goods at specific ‘prices’ (the original hypothesis and these comments are equally culturally bound to an American context). The methodological individualism of this approach is in marked contrast to the concern
with
institutions,
structures
and systems
in Clark’s
interesting
and, for
geographers, relatively original treatment of the relationships between democracy and the capitalist state. The section closes with a pair of essays set at the global scale. Brunn’s forward look to the geopolitics of the next century is no mean accomplishment, although of necessity somewhat uneven as 10 different scenarios are considered, while Taylor in a work he considers ‘basic and elementary’ essentially tries to connect the influential writings of Wallerstein on the world economy with political geography. In his proposed framework, the key actor is not the state but international capital, expressed organizationally as the transnational firm which structures the global space-economy and forces states to be fundamentally reactive example. Part III
with
respect
is hardest
to such
matters
to characterize-the
as trade, editors
tariffs,
and investment,
use the term
‘Agendas’,
for and
several specific directions do emerge. Dear, continuing his work in the ‘radical’ tradition, points to the urgent need for a theory of the local state although it is questionable if a general theory can be developed (the conceptual difficulties are revealed by Dear’s treatment of Canadian provinces as local states-a position that contradicts the essence of federalism-and the uneven comparisons that result when the local state in Britain is discussed). While not all will agree that what is needed is a materialist theory of the local state, the further development of this position will either elicit acceptance or require a convincing rebuttal by dissenters from the materialist view. Burnett’s thorough and organized review of local political outputs and outcomes in British and North American cities (overwhelmingly American though) ends with a clear statement of future research needs. A pervasive feature of political life in many contemporary societies is greater citizen participation and in a brief paper Kirby argues that studying planning inquiries (a central element of the British planning process) would be profitable in terms of a better understanding of the interests which are in conflict. The geography of local
Review essay
83
government has been a frequent topic in the recent literature and Honey’s work on local jurisdictional change in England (somewhat familiar through previous papers) is representative of this research. Here, the emphasis is on the human element in the formal evaluation process and how specific proposals correspond with stated principles. The lesson is that the outcome is primarily a function of the views held by principals in the party in ofice (my personal preference would have been to place this paper in the ‘Applications’ section). The distinctive contribution of Agnew’s original essay is to counterpose dialectical and structural theories in terms of their ability to explain political regionalism, a phenomenon of growing interest and of obvious significance to political geography. Favouring as he does the dialectical, Agnew indicates that political geographers (as social scientists) must choose between competing views of human agency-‘denial of the thinking/acting subject’ will lead to a preference for structural theorizing with determinist implications (a style certainly favoured by some co-contributors). Finally in this section, House breathes new life into frontier studies by developing an operational model to escape the trap of exceptionalism that has hampered such studies in the past, and Hall presents a fascinating exposition on how geographers might usefully study propaganda, something that too often is overlooked in the definition and formation of interests upon which we supposedly act in rational fashion (some interesting linkages between this work and the study of citizen participation and conflict over state planning suggest themselves here). The concluding section contains seven papers which are mostly empirical in nature. They connect in varying ways with a number of the preceding papers but also stand as independent works, especially those of Hudson and Williams which have theoretical prefaces. Williams’ essay on identity and autonomy as revealed through the separatist movement in Quebec, a superior work in its own right, complements Agnew’s essay well, though he leans more to structural theorizing. Hudson’s work needs to be emulated for it eschews the abstractions of many of his neo-Marxist cohorts and bravely attempts to situate the swings and vicissitudes of British transport policy in the acts of a state grappling with a rationality and legitimacy crisis (though it is debatable if the central actors that he deals with recognized this as their milieu). Electoral geography is represented at two very different levels of technical proficiency. The simple approach of Lemon to the geography of voting in recent South African elections is informative yet avoids the difficult inferential problems that beset studies such as O’Loughlin’s cross-national analysis which use aggregate data to study neighborhood or contextual effects that purportedly operate through the individual voter and his or her electoral choice (the individual electoral decision also being aggregated to a vote proportion). Three papers make indirect connection with Sack’s writing on territoriality: Paddison on the difficult task of identifying local political communities for the delivery of services and as an element in representative democracy (useful links here to Burnett and Clark); Rowley on Zionist colonization and settlement of what has become the state of Israel; and Brohman and Knight on the geopolitics of a conflict that has increasingly moved to center stage of late-Namibia/Southwest Africa. Each would serve to make specific and concrete to students the ideas and frameworks of earlier writings, both in this volume and elsewhere in political geography. Given the diversity of contributions as noted, finding a workable structure could not have been easy and the editors have succeeded in developing a sensible
84
Review essa2
combination from many possible permutations. Each of the four sections contains an editorial introduction and it is here that Burnett and Taylor come closest to making the kind of statements that the book badly needs at its close. Here too, in addition to helpful and admirably concise commentaries upon the papers which follow in each section, we find evidence of a profound division which currently bedevils political geography (and, I suspect, other subfields in geography). Selected issues arising Burnett and Taylor attempt a definition of the field-‘political geography is no more and no less than political studies carried out by geographers using the techniques and ideas ~sso~~ufe~lvdth [emphasis added] their spatial perspectives’ (p. 4). This conception, emphasized in the book’s title, certainly implies that geographers have something distinctive to offer in studying political behavior and structures----there is a geographica perspective (one could probably provoke an argument by querying the use of ‘spatial’ in preference to ‘geographic’: are we unsure of the essential meaning of the latter, whereas the former conveys a firmer conviction born out of locational analysis and the study of spatial organization?). But in the same introductory remarks to Part I and in the essay by Johnston, for example, the merit of techniques and ideas associated with the spatial perspective is questioned (by implication and by direction). Burnett and Taylor themselves point to the disagreement amongst political geographers ‘on fundamental issues’. While one dimension is the continuing relevance of ‘traditional’ views, the deepest division is with respect to basic political assumptions. The dichotomy is between ‘critical social theory’, building upon a broadly Marxist framework, and ‘traditional social theory’, including such schema as public choice theory. Thus what divide political geographers most acutely are ideas and modes of reasoning that are not strongly associated with space or location, or treat them more or less incidentally (e.g. the externality notion). Compounding this, we see Johnston (as characterized by the editors) urging political geographers to draw ‘techniques and ideas from other modern political studies’ (p. 7). Other papers exemplify this charge, at least in terms of ideas-notable examples are Clark, who uses the models of Downs and Tiebout as departure points for his ‘radical’ discussion of democracy and its relationship with the capitalist state through institutional arrangements, and Agnew, who explores the nature of structural and dialectical theories and applies these in cursory fashion to regionally based political movements (Spain, Scotland, Wales, Quebec). This raises what is to me at least a troubling question. In carrying out political studies, some geographers give little credence to techniques and ideas associated with spatial perspectives; yet by the lights of the editors this is the nub of political geography. How then will political geographers best advance their professional and disciplinary interests. 2 Will these be maximized by turning more and more to political and social theories and philosophies (many of which are ‘contested’, to paraphrase Lukes) and then applying the central concepts in specific places, perhaps in a comparative manner to deal directly with place to place or geographic variation, or through the skilful application of geographic ideas and associated techniques to the stuff of political life? For some it may not matter in which disciplinary context the intellectual mainsprings of political geography lie, but if they lie outside the accepted (?) confines of geography (no consensus here), then
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political geographers will have to demonstrate that their work is not simply a rehashing of that of others, served up for geographic consumption. They must show that theoretical frameworks that lack a geography are partial and limited; Reynolds, for one, seems to agree that ‘. . . these lines of inquiry are largely dead-ended without geographical analysis and elaboration’ (p. 97). Consider elections. At one level, they can be analysed for the spatial variations in outcomes per se with more or less sophisticated techniques. Again, the voting decision, it is asserted, can be decomposed in such a manner as to reveal the influence of interaction with proximate persons (or ‘neighbours’), giving rise to what are termed contextual effects. The paper by Lemon on voting patterns in South Africa and O’Loughlin’s four nation study illustrate well these approaches. For others, it is the message of the election that is important. Archer, for example, in enthusiastically presenting the public choice view, would appear to endorse the concept of the vote as purchase-by expressing approval on election day, for example, voters ratify the incumbents’ decisions on the bundle of goods and services (and their associated prices such as charges and taxes) which are publicly provided. Thus voting and its outcome are an integral feedback element in a systems-oriented view of political processes. For some ensconced in the ‘critical social theory’ camp, elections are an essential part of the mystification function of the state. The mass (or at least those who bother to vote) are socialized into believing that they are exercising their democratic rights, but the ‘deeper truth’ is that this periodic selection of rule makers from political elites is simply a process for deciding who sits in a legislature, an institution which is part of a state apparatus whose central task is the maintenance and reproduction of the capitalist system, not necessarily unchanged but with its fundamental relations in production undisturbed. Thus, the electoral stuggle between parties is a diversion and pales into insignificance in comparison to class struggles; as such, it is scarcely a worthwhile object of analysis. While this view is not specifically explicated in the papers by Dear and Clark, and is of necessity something of a caricature here, they both echo the general sentiment (see Clark: 127; Dear: 197-198). If one normally expects elections to be part of political studies, which of these contrasting and incompatible approaches is most representative of a spatial perspective? Some discussion of these approaches and their relative strengths and limitations is sorely needed for those who will confront political geography in the decade ahead, whether they be geographers ‘inside’ or, say, political scientists looking in from ‘outside’. The treatment of the state as an object of analysis is equally diverse in these papers and the reader may be left somewhat uncertain in the absence of any systematic treatment as to the potential utility of the state as a concept. As Taylor notes ‘. . . the state has been rediscovered largely through the efforts of the radical school of geographers’ (p. 158). What needs to be said, however, is that the conception of the state as represented to geographers is partial at best. While competing schools of thought are outlined (Dear’s essay), they are within the neo-Marxist framework. There are certainly other treatments of the state that must be presented to geographers if this phenomenon is to receive adequate scrutiny. In this volume alone, for example, we see the state as a territorial unit which functions to give concrete and legal expression to the ‘Promised Land’, a central symbol in Jewish thought and Zionism (Rowley); as a paradoxical entity in relation to nationalist movements-as in Williams’ essay on ethnic separatism in Quebec where the federal state of Canada symbolizes the culturally repressive, assimilating tendency,
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whereas a new sovereign state, Quebec, would be the vehicle whereby FrenchCanadian nationalism might be legitimately represented and culturally liberated; as the creator of negative externalities on the landscape (Kirby); as numerous uncoordinated entities littering the world landscape and transcended by the key actors in a world economy, the transnational companies (Taylor). This listing is not exhaustive for the state is treated as a central element in other essays (e.g. Brunn, Hudson). Where the geographic perspective is most evident is in those instances where considerations of the state have an explicit territorial component. Sack contends rightly that geography (including political geography) has neglected territoriality and concentrated on interaction in terms of spatial analysis, part of geography’s major perspectives (p. 53). Yet the state is expressed in territorial terms and the history of many states has borne witness to the struggle by one group to extend effective control over other geographic areas, their occupants and resources-to make them, in Sack’s usage, territories. Citizenship follows from being born within a particular territory, and the complex linkages between allegiance, politicai obligation and nationalism find expression in people’s identification with places (in this volume, Agnew, Williams, Clark and Rowley are the most informative on these issues). Specific geographic areas are the object of territoriality (as a process) and, being real places, another central geographic perspective is revealed (again following Sack)--our relationship to nature. Interestingly, this perspective is absent from the present set of essays, although the politics of the environment would seem to be a logical area for inclusion and particularly appealing to political geographers as geographers. Taking resources as part of nature, however, means that certain of the geopolitical considerations do reflect this perspective, if somewhat indirectly (the Brohman~Knight paper on Namibia, Taylor’s comments on the North-South axis, and certain of Brunn’s scenarios). Finally, in terms of issues arising, two comments on the possibility of yet more diversity can be made. If diversity is taken as a strength (the editorial position) and as reflecting the various competing intellectual frameworks in the discipline, then one entrant that might be expected would be a political study by a geographer utilizing an experiential stance. This would yield insight into the relational qualities of power, authority and even coercion. A central theme of modern life is man’s alienation from the state, notably its bureaucratic apparatus or institutions (a theme that transcends capitalism, incidentally). Perhaps a ‘humanistic’ study of selected individuals as they confront a socially constructed institution, yet not of their making, would be revealing, much as recent work in social geography utilizing this approach has yielded insight into human behavior. Secondly, political studies by geographers (and others) will require a pronounced historical cast. The connection between political geography and history was stronger in earlier eras and suffered in the heyday of locational analysis of political systems (see also Johnston: 28). While certain authors dispute the potential of links to political science (contrast Johnston’s position with that of Kirby-‘political science has not provided geography with many sources of inspiration’), the need for work soundly based in historical context remains. House, Hall and Rowley among the present authors demonstrate sensitivity to this issue. Also, Taylor’s essay makes it clear that political geographers will need a sound historical base to interpret and apply the work of Wallerstein and his followers, and his critics. Who can comprehend Northern Ireland or Quebec without a historical appreciation? Or, again,
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investments in transportation are enormously durable, and among the real constraints on British transport planners are the tangible legacies of canal, rail and turnpike entrepreneurs and promoters of bygone years. They define one dimension of the milieu in which policies and programs are debated and implemented and their origin and geographical structuring cannot be ignored-even if taken as given, the reality that confronts us is historically constructed. In guarding against the poverty of historicism, we cannot afford to become ahistorical as we have been apolitical. Conclusion I strongly recommend this volume, despite its flaws, and the editors and contributors are to be commended for a timely and professional enterprise. Together with a judicious selection of other works, it can serve as the basic reading in advanced courses in political geography. The student will thus be introduced to a diverse and potentially bewildering set of views and perspectives. The burden on the teacher/instructor will indeed be considerable, but I agree with the editors that the task will be rewarding. The integration of this set of essays, together with the materials in this journal, into curricula, will surely act as a catalyst for more research and study. The new generation of political geographers will never again be cut off from the contested ideas of contemporary social thought and practice. The bridges built by the authors of these various essays will not readily be dismantled or discarded though students will inevitably follow certain directions more than others. Two major debates will be likely. One will be over how best to comprehend the existence and nature of the state and the second debate will almost certainly be over the nature of an explicitly spatial or geographic perspective(s) and its relevance for political study, an issue that this volume tends to take for granted rather than confront directly. No less than the material it studies will political geography in the 80s be free from conflict. John Mercer Department of Geography Syracuse University New York 13210, USA Reference BURNETT, A. AND TAYLOR, P.J. (1981). Wiley.
Political Studier from Spatial Perspectives. Chichester,
Sussex: