Editor's introduction: Local research in Britain and Poland

Geoforum, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 127-130.1989 Printed in Great Britain

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00%7185/89 $3.00+ 0.00 1989 Pergamon Press pk

Editor’s l~trod~ctio~: Local Research in Britain and Poland

SIMON S. DUNCAN,*

of papers began life in a British-Polish conference on ‘Local research in Britain and Poland’, held in Warsaw in March 1987, and organised by Antoni Kukhnski at the Institute of Space Economy. The general idea was that, for somewhat differing reasons and with radically different contexts, researchers in both Britain and Poland were reevaluating and restressing the importance of ‘the local’ for urban and regional research. It made some sense, therefore, to meet and compare results so far. This volume

This remains the overall aim of this volume, although in producing it more British contributions have emerged to fill obvious gaps left by the conference Polish conpapers, while-unfortunately-some tributions have fallen by the wayside. The weight of material therefore lies with the British research. But this does not detract from the general aim, for it is clear that each national research school can benefit from the other. I will comment upon this in more detail as I introduce each paper below, but it is useful to ~stinguish the major elements now. Put briefly, the Polish contributions starkly show the social and political importance of understanding spatial variations; how they are created and what to do about it. The British contributions are more insular in referring much more to a world of research, rather than a wider political world, but on the other hand have developed analytical concepts and methods lacking in the Polish research. In these respects at least, each national tradition could benefit from a reading of the other. Why, in both national research schools, did a renewed emphasis on spatial variations emerge during the

*London School of Economics and Political Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, U.K.

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London, U.K.

early 198Os? This reflected both political and intellectual changes in Poland and Britain alike, although again the emphasis varied in each. In Britain, the immediate stimulus for a change in direction was social science theory as reflected in the urban and regional field. During the 1960s and 1970s the component disciplines (parts of human geography, urban sociology, social administration and urban economics) had been taken out of the earlier particularism of community studies, factorial ecology and legislation-bashing by the interruption of structuralist theory. This new theory concerned the nature of capitalist social systems and the role played by urban and regional institutions within them. This was extremely valuable in returning research to emphasise process, and the dynamics underlying process, in a way that had virtually been lost since the demise of the Chicago School of urban ecology. At last there was a way out from narrow, empiricist navel-gazing. But, with experience, there was a growing dissatisfaction with the way the explanation was now being organised. The new theories tended to explain social phenomena by reference to the functions they performed for society, or for capitalism. The early work of Castells is perhaps the best known example in urban and regional studies. In this case cities were seen as the site of consumption processes involved in the reproduction of labour power, and this perspective was buttressed by a form of structuralist Marxism following Poulantzas and Althusser. But, as critics pointed out, while this role might be the case it did little to explain how people acted in specific cities; still less could it account for variations in what they did. This sort of reaction was codified in the work of Giddens on social theory. He criticised functionalist accounts as having no proper appreciation of human agency, where people’s actions were reduced to little more than the per127

128 formance of functional imperatives laid down by society. Further, the idea that ‘society’ has distinct needs is itself problematical; even more that this ‘society’ can simply impose these needs. Instead the concept of an overreaching and overbearing society with its own coherence and structure has been replaced by a greater emphasis on the specificities of different social structures and entities. There has thus been a move away from theoreticism (where empirical research on specific situations was disparaged) and overgeneralisation (where specific variations between places were ignored), and a reaction against structural determinism (in which human agency was dispelled from the social explanation). This theoretical change was reinforced by the social and political context in the Britain of the late 1970s and early 198Os.Understanding how capitalist society worked at a general level seemed to have little connection with how people acted; ignoring the abstract expose they voted in large numbers for rightwing governments both in Europe and North America, governments which then set about reinforcing the very injustices which research had identified and explained. It would be necessary instead to work on the level of people’s immediate-usually ‘local’-concerns both in terms of political action and the research informing it. Hence, in Britain, the very concrete if politically challenging policies promoted by oppositional left-wing city authorities like the Greater London Council. Questions of specificity and spatially uneven development were therefore very much back on the agenda. Given these linked theoretical and contextual changes, the emergent focus on ‘the local’ and ‘the locality’ as the substantive basis of a new research programme becomes easier to understand. ‘The locality’ seemed to offer something concrete rather than abstract, something specific rather than general, and a sphere where human agents mobilised and lived their daily lives. Unfortunately, the danger of the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction seems to have been forgotten. It was not at all certain what ‘the local’ or ‘locality’ actually was in either empirical or conceptual terms, and might this not just mean resurrecting the old, discredited traditions of spatial determinism and empiricism? In Poland the emphasis was much more on the political context for academic research [although readers should note this editor’s relative ignorance about Polish research; but see RYKIEL (1988)]. An

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increasingly ossified and centralised bureaucracy was in control of an economy and nation-state that was, in fact, rapidly going out of control. On the one hand it had become clear that centralised planning was inadequate for both social and economic progress. On the other hand it was not clear how this situation should-or could-be changed or at least improved. Certainly the Solidarity movement had attempted far too much, far too quickly, and so worker’s self-management and Polish versions of Yugoslavia or the Dubcek Spring were forcibly ruled out. Similarly, the Hungarian example of ‘marketisation’ begged as many questions as it answered, especially since economic issues were resolutely separated from political ones. But if the Solidarity reform movement had been blocked, so Polish central government found it had snookered itself; economic and social renewal was obviously a priority, but the popular basis of a way forward was just as much inadmissible. Perhaps, in this situation, ‘the local’ could offer a middle way out of the impasse. Management powers, both social and economic, could be devolved to a more local level where they could be subject to---and harness-popular energies but without, as with Solidarity, threatening existing power relationships in the nation-state and beyond. But to do this effectively, one had to know how ‘local systems’ worked, and might work, and what ‘the local’ was. Hence the need for research. This renewed political concern with the local and also brought attention back to the more disciplin~y focus on central planning. Both the focus and the instruments of centralised regional planning had been shown to be inadequate. And a renewed emphasis on decentralised, local planning from a purely technical point of view dovetailed nicely into the socio-political emphasis on the local. Like so many other things all this echoes, if in a reversed way, the British experience. There both government and economic management is becoming more centralised, through the twin processes of state management in favour of increasingly concentrated market power. Again, majority opinion was not altogether happy with these developments, as both general election results (the Thatcher governments have always received a minority--even if the largest minority-of votes) and numerous surveys of social attitudes have shown. But again, what was the way out? If Mrs Thatcher had harnessed, for her own political ends, the energies of the new economics of flexible specialisation and ‘PostFordism’ then perhaps the alternative politics of democratic socialism, or just progressivism, could do the same. But rather than ‘restructuring for capital’ (and, as a by-product, for Thatcherite conservatism),

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alternative centres of social power could develop ‘restructuring for labour’ and hence improve individual control over economic and social change. Where, however, were these alternative centres of power from which such alternative policies could be implemented? Classically, they were in the realm of the local state and local government. Hence a need for an improved understanding of the localised side of economies and societies. But, of course, the heyday of ‘new left municipal socialism’ in the early 1980s is now over; the Thatcher governments have seen to that, just as the Polish government have dealt with the local Poland of Solidarity. The cont~butions in this volume reflect their different, but analogous, contexts quite clearly-and in so doing each national school provides crucial ingredients missing in the other. Dunca~l begins with an explication of the difference that spatial variations make to social behaviour. He summarises and brings together the results of recent debates in British geography and sociology, and ends up with an abstract account of how analysis should proceed. But that paper is less adequate on what this means for research practice, still less for political practice. In contrast Jntowiecki draws directly upon the political crisis in Poland to assess the role and frustrated importance of ‘local systems’ in socio-political wellbeing. But in so doing he romanticises visions of local autonomy and pre-capitalist society as some sort of still possible Golden Age. One analytical concept that is missing from Jalowiecki’s account is the idea of civil society. The tendency to see Golden Ages in some ideal past situation is always understandable, especially when looking from a tension-filled current reality. Nonetheless, a concept like civil society would have allowed Jalowiecki to go further in examining exactly which features of past ‘local systems’ were most relevant to present-day hopes for reform. The paper immediately following this, by Goodwin, gives some indications of how this task might proceed. Goodwin sorts out what the increasingly popular, but ambiguous, concept of ‘civil society’ means-in reference to both its academic western European and its political eastern European use. He is then in a position to suggest how the concept might be employed in urban and regional research. H&ford goes on from this in examining a concrete and current example of a ‘local initiative’-local government policies in Britain which ostensibly aim to improve the social and economic position of women. For in order to under-

stand how and where these policies develop it is necessary both to have some concept of ‘civil society’ and to develop it in the context of spatial variation. In this case ‘spatial divisions of patriarchy’ interact with ‘spatial divisions of labour’ to create specific local social situations and so stimulate local government policy outputs. Perhaps research of this kind shows how the potential of ‘local systems’ might be understood. It also shows up, incidentally, the genderblindness of much research which-supposedlyconcerns itself with ‘real people’ and ‘the local’. Gorzelak

and Sml start off on another track by showing how imbalances in the Polish space-economy are both a symptom and a consequence of the sociopolitical problem of Poland as a whole. The analysis of the more basic features of economic and natural systems are, perhaps, unfashionable in British urban and regional studies at the moment but-as this paper shows-their influence can nonetheless be profound. Inevitably, however, Gorzelak and Szul are weaker on the alternatives, although they do at least stick their necks out in sketching out an alternative scenario. But partly also this weakness stems from the lack of a wider contextualisation. Quite possibly, the Polish crisis is not only a -function of Polish mismanagement and centralised direction-but is also part of the general European crisis as ‘Fordism’ (mass production-mass consumption capitalism) transforms itself to something else (‘neo-Fordism’ perhaps). And in Poland, of course, it is the state that makes this transition directly rather than multinational corporations. This may be why the authors, although condemning the Polish experience of central planning, vacillate between asking for more (better) planning on the one hand, and more markets on the other (and, for the Western reader, their ideas of the social efficacy of markets is contentious). Again, the realities of Poland are nicely counterbalanced by the intellectualism of Britain. First, Martin summarises the huge amount of literature now available which attempts to grapple with the crisis in Fordism, and what this may mean in spatial development terms. Second, following this, Savage and Fielding discussin a way that also echoes Gonelak and Szul-how spatial ordering interacts with economic change. In this case the uneven development of the British economy is affected by how classes are differentially formed, and in turn class formation is spatially variant. Like Halford’s paper, this contribution also provides a nice correction to the common, if usually implicit, economic determinism of most research in the urban and regional field. Social divisions can just as well affect economic change as vice versa.

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130 Dickens changes tack once more by commenting on another variety of determinism-that represented by social psychological and especially socio-biological explanations of social change. He claims that these theories are essential for urban and regional studies in pointing to ‘innate’ bases for human behaviour-but only if we reject determinism and recognise that these bases can only operate as mediated by and interacting with social and cultural systems. This conclusion seems to set up a paradox, for it implies that while-of course-humans are also biological organisms the explanation for what they do is actually to be found in social systems. Social psychology and even more socio-biology in themselves cannot offer very much. Kukliriski

and Cooke round off the volume by summarising, from their perspectives, trends in each national school of ‘local research’. Here we see quite starkly the contrast in audience, goals and approach. Kuklinski briskly summarises recent Polish research where his major aim is to set up research-and gain funding-to explore the connection between ‘local Poland’ and ways of treating the Polish crisis. Cooke writes an elegant piece ranging widely over intellectual trends and fashions over the last 15 years, noting their connection to changes in society and economy. This raises the problem of how we are to understand the social construction of intellectual work. Cooke makes some play of the crisis of ‘Fordism’, and of the

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emergence of what he calls ‘Post-Fordism’. It is this changeover that, according to him, underlies present intellectual changes. Yet some commentators would claim that Post-Fordism exists only as a fashionable ideology-all that is happening is that there are developments in mass-production, state-supported capitalism. Maybe Britain is experiencing a crisis within these developments, but other parts of the world (Japan and the newly industrialised countries) and the system itself are not. Similarly, Kuklinski places the blame for Poland’s ills squarely on the shoulders of centralised planning and authority systems, and similarly this crisis creates and demands new sorts of research. But again, maybe the situation in Poland reflects not only internal social systems, but its place in a world system of development and underdevelopment. Finally, I would like Piotr Dutkiewicz for conference, and for tions to this volume tion.

to thank Antoni Kuklinski and setting up the original Warsaw collecting the Polish contribuand arranging for their transla-

Reference RYKIEL, Z. (1988) The functioning and the development of Polish human geography, Prog. Hum. Geog., 12,3.