Pragmatism and power, or the power to make a difference in a radically contingent world

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Geoforum 39 (2008) 1613–1624 www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Pragmatism and power, or the power to make a difference in a radically contingent world John Allen Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, United Kingdom Received 24 May 2006; received in revised form 2 March 2007

Abstract Power seems to occupy an understated role in much pragmatist thought, both classical and contemporary. It is clearly a blind spot in Richard Rorty’s work, although it is ever present in the background, and for John Dewey and William James it often appears as indistinguishable from the power to act or intervene in events so as to make a difference. In this paper, I want to push a practical account of power a step further by drawing out its expedient, anti-foundational character and its Dewey-style grounding in experience. I also try to show how the power to make a difference may just as easily be transformed into the powers of imposition and constraint, where one side gains at the expense of another. Following that, I draw out a more provisional sense of power based upon the difference that space and spatiality make to what pragmatists have traditionally referred to as the contextuality and contingency of events. This is tentatively explored by a consideration of what spatial experiments with power might look like when employed to bring about change and make a difference in the world. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Power; Experience; Contingency; Context; Anti-foundational; Spatial experiments

1. Introduction In this paper, I want to suggest that a pragmatist reading of power has much to offer geographers and, equally, that geography has much to contribute to our understanding of power as it is practised. The intellectual input is not just one way, with geographers the appreciative recipients of knowledge drawn from a recently rekindled pragmatic philosophy. Space, or rather spatiality, is an active part of the ways in which power is practised and an understanding of its radically contingent character owes much, I would have thought, to the fact that power itself is inherently spatial. The opportunity to argue the case, however, is hindered somewhat by the fact that in much pragmatist thought, both classical and contemporary (see Barnes, 2008; Hepple, 2008), power seems to occupy a largely understated role. For much of the time, the relationship between power and practice

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appears to be largely presumed, rather than spelt out or labelled as such, even though it was clearly present in the background events which gave rise to the pragmatist tradition. The ravages of a brutal Civil War and the monolithic forces of industrial capitalism in late nineteenth century America were deeply felt by both William James and John Dewey, the latter one of the more overtly political actors within the pragmatist tradition (see Menand, 2001; Mills, 1966; West, 1989), yet neither provided much in the way of a sustained analysis of the economic and political power blocs that frustrated their democratic aspirations for a modern, liberal North America. This may also be said today with perhaps greater conviction about Richard Rorty’s work which, unquestionably, is responsible for bringing about a reassessment of the North American pragmatist tradition. In both his philosophical and political writings, Rorty has challenged and rebutted just about every criticism directed at his pragmatist views, yet on the subject of power and its workings, he has remained strangely mute. His most recent publications

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which strike a political note, Achieving Our Country (1998a) and Philosophy and Social Hope (1999), are dotted with references to class politics and the need to ‘develop some sort of countervailing power to that of the super-rich’ (1999, p. 233), yet he has little practical to say about how such powerful forces may be offset or how the nature of the power relations may be confronted. Chantel Mouffe (1996, 2000) traces the absence of any systematic treatment of power in Rorty’s work to his seeming inability to grasp the endemic nature of political antagonisms, and the impossibility of establishing an all-inclusive society. Whilst perhaps fair as a criticism of Rorty, this would certainly be a more difficult charge to level at John Dewey, however, given his heightened sense of the institutional abuses of political and economic power throughout his long life (see Ryan, 1995). Yet, despite that, there is surprisingly little in his writings about how the dominant forces of his day actually worked to constrain people’s lives. In Liberalism and Social Action (1935), for example, one of his most prominent political essays, there is a glimpse of the violence and coercion perpetrated by governments, corporations and organized property interests alike, though little that would pass for a pragmatic assessment of the exercise of power. To present this lack of analysis as a criticism, however, would be misplaced; for there is more to power than merely the weighty institutions of the world holding ‘power over’ others. For my part, I think that we would do better to look elsewhere for a pragmatic sense of power, away from the idea that power only comes in one recognizable shape or form: as some kind of force that is imposed on the will of others, as an instrument of domination and constraint. In what follows, I wish to argue that the ingrained idea of power as a force to be reckoned with, something which is held over others, is displaced in much pragmatist thought by the looser notion that power is something that makes things happen: it is what enables us to make a difference in the world. It is to acknowledge that the ability of an agent to act, to intervene in events so as to make a difference, is also a form of power. As demanding as it may be to let go of the fact that power is always wielded at somebody else’s expense, it is, I believe, an account of the enabling, not the repressive, side to power that pragmatism largely has to offer geographers. This looser notion of power, though, is not without its pitfalls, for in many respects a pragmatic, enabling sense of power is often indistinguishable from plain action or change, and therein lies the grounds for potential confusion. If power does indeed amount to little more than acting in the world, albeit to bring about effective change, then it is difficult to know exactly what is not power. One possible way to avoid this pitfall, however, is to draw attention to power as a relational effect of social interaction, rather than allude to power as merely the ability to act (see Allen, 2003; Massey et al., 1999). In pragmatic terms, it has the advantage, I believe, of conceiving power in a more avowedly Deweyan framework, where power is grasped through

our distinctive experience of it – either because we are the ones exercising it or because we are on the receiving end and exercised by it (see Cutchin, 2008). It is not simply that a pragmatist reading of power which foregrounds experience and enablement has much to offer geographers, however. As indicated, a geographical reconfiguration of how power is practised can also add something to a pragmatist’s sense of the contextual and contingent character of power (see Barnes, 2008). There is more to contextuality than simply knowing that times and places are different from one another, as indeed there is more to contingency than a belief in the randomness of events. The ‘chance of space’ (see Massey, 2005) is not a celebration of geographical difference, unpredictability and total randomness, but rather it involves an appreciation of the mix of purposeful and chance practices – some elements of which are drawn from elsewhere – as they come together to produce particular configurations of powerful and not so powerful practices in the places that we find ourselves. It is this specific geographical twist that I believe can refine a pragmatist reading of power. In the first part of the paper, I explore what a pragmatic account of power might look like if we are to move beyond the idea that power is simply a useful tool. In spelling this out, I try to retain a sense of power as a purposeful practice, but one that is characterized by expediency and is anti-foundational in practice. Following that, by way of caution, I show how the power to make a difference may just as easily lead to domination and constraint as it does to enablement and the greater good. Then, in the second part of the paper, I turn to issues of contextuality, contingency and experimentation to tease out a more explicit geographical engagement with these notions to advance a pragmatist reading of power that brings to the fore its provisional character. Throughout the paper I draw upon examples from the geographies of labour and environmental activism to illustrate my argument. 2. Power in practice One of the comments that Rorty makes about Foucault’s productive notion of power in Consequences of Pragmatism (1982) is that it is not markedly different from seeing power as one among any number of practical tools that people use to meet their needs and desires. The belief that many things in life, our ideas, language, even pragmatism itself as a philosophy, are useful tools for coping with the world and its challenges is a core thread in pragmatist thinking, from James and Dewey onwards. When power is included in an arsenal of tools like this it is primarily regarded as a means of intervening in the world, as a tool that is capable of making a difference. There is nothing especially geographical about this observation, or indeed anything that is restricted to pragmatism, for such a broad understanding of power, as the means to make a difference, can be found in writings across the philosophical spectrum. Anthony Giddens, for one,

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shares certain sentiments that most pragmatists could subscribe to when it comes to defining power. For him, as he first characterized it, power is ‘an element of action, and refers to the range of interventions of which an agent is capable. Power in this broad sense is equivalent to the transformative capacity of human action: the capability of human beings to intervene in a series of events so as to alter their course’ (1977, p. 348, emphasis in original). Later, when writing about a world of distanciated relations and disembedded institutions, the mobilization and retrieval of resources over space represented for him a modern form of intervention to secure outcomes at-a-distance (see Giddens, 1985, 1990). The difference that power makes, as an applied tool, on a global canvas is that it is ‘stretched’ to accommodate the actions of those physically distant from events elsewhere. In another guise, the power to act or intervene to change the way things are is a key aspect of Hannah Arendt’s thought. Although conceived less as an instrumental tool, power for Arendt (1958, 1970) is a more tenuous production, something that springs up between people when they come together in mutual action to further a common purpose. As with Dewey, the thrust of power for her is associational, empowering in and of its own right, and designed to make a difference that enriches public life. Through the work of Seyla Benhabib (1992, 1996), and others, Arendt’s views have been used to construct a more collaborative, enabling dimension to power that, within a feminist political framework, is positive in terms of the gains made, rather than zero-sum. The formation of a common will which transcends particular interests by mobilizing around issues that are faced collectively may bring benefits for all involved, not least through the empowerment of people relating to one another in the pursuit of political ends. As such, it is the power to act together that, for Arendt, is capable of making a difference in the world of public affairs. In the impoverished setting of Chicago in the 1890s, Dewey would have been well aware of the need for just this type of social intervention to bring about a change in the lives of the working poor (Ryan, 1995; Menand, 2001). How such changes could be wrought, however, given the dramatic differences in ability to effect change was certainly something that exercised Dewey’s mind well into the next century. In Individualism Old and New (1930), essentially his critique of laissez-faire individualism, he takes issue with those who believe that everyone has equal ability to gain power over their lives. The notion that men are equally free to act if only the same legal arrangements apply to all – irrespective of differences in education, in command of capital, and the control of the social environment which is furnished by the institution of property– is a pure absurdity, as the facts have demonstrated. The only possible conclusion, both intellectually and practically, is that the attainment of freedom conceived as

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power to act in accord with choice depends upon positive and constructive changes in social arrangements. (1930, p. 100-1, also cited in Shusterman, 2004, p. 86) As a tool for coping with the world, the power to act is clearly historically and geographically circumscribed, but for Dewey it nonetheless remains the key to autonomy and self-development, and in turn to a more progressive social arrangement. In Dewey’s account of agency, as with Giddens and Arendt’s understanding of power, there are clearly pointers towards a transformational sense of power and action, but it would be wrong to simply leave it there. Whilst it is important to distinguish the ‘power to’ act with others from the more familiar exercise of ‘power over’ others, what appears to mark out a practical account of power, to my mind, is, first, that it is exercised with a purpose in mind: be it the pursuit of a political goal, the drive to end some form of global injustice, the demand for cultural recognition and identity, or simply the need to put ‘wrongs’ right. And second, that whatever the purpose in mind, some ways of exercising power always seem to work better than others to secure it. Power may be a useful means to get things done, a capability that enables us to intervene, but some actions appear more suited to given ends than others. 2.1. Means suitable to an end From a pragmatist standpoint, it would seem that power, although exercised intentionally to achieve a specific goal or purpose, is more an expedient practice. Its exercise is conducive to the needs and demands of the moment in that, to borrow from Rorty, some actions ‘work better for certain purposes than any previous tool’ (Rorty, 1989, p. 19). What works best for some political actors and organizations would thus appear to be more a question of having hit upon the right set of actions. This is perhaps especially true for the networked campaigns, often global in reach, that have been mobilized around the singular purposes of debt relief for poorer countries, ending factory sweatshop exploitation, human rights, or any number of environmental goals set by groups seeking to bring about effective social change (see, for example, Della Porta and Tarrow, 2005). The activation of moral and political energies with a specific purpose in mind, often with the aim of enlivening public debate and promoting reflection on different ways of organizing political and civic life, speaks as much to a Deweyan agenda of associational power, as it does to Arendt’s ideal of ‘public space’ as an arena for action and informed debate. In these broad political settings, different kinds of resources – finance, skills, contacts and such – are drawn upon to exercise power, to make a difference. As both Michael Goldman (1998) and Cori Hayden (2003) have shown, for instance, campaigning groups

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involved in the need to preserve the rich biodiversity of the global South so that all may benefit, especially the indigenous communities dependent upon such a rich mix, have considered power not so much as a useful tool, but rather as a series of interventions of which they are capable. Campaigning groups and indigenous activists have taken stock of the resources at their disposal, both global and local, to gauge what works best to preserve the ‘global commons’, whether that be working with other civil society organizations, forging alliances with interested parties, adopting legal positions, making representations in the public arena, or some other such intervention. A similar sense of the expediency of this transformational form of power is evident in the documented actions of the antisweatshop movement who tailor their campaigns to suit the particular aims in mind, from e-campaigns directed at affluent consumers to shame the big clothing manufacturers, the lobbying of politicians to bring pressure to bear on distant governments associated with the use of child labour, the boycott of a major retail chain for selling goods knowingly produced under sweatshop conditions, to bridging alliances between workers and far-off consumer political activists (see Hartwick, 2000; Johns and Vural, 2000; Silvey, 2004; Klein, 2000; Oxfam, 2004; Clean Clothes Campaign, 2006). Far from mindless trial and error, it would seem that different campaigning groups focus their energies where their impact is most likely to be effective. They hit upon what works best for them – given the political moment and context. Such practised expediency, however, is further complicated by the involvement of different actors at different times often with contradictory aims, the sheer difficulty of knowing what works best as situations mutate and change, and the potential to misjudge what is and what is not possible (see Allen, 2004). In many respects, these types of political activism resemble experiments with power, as Dewey (1916) might have thought of them. Even though power may be exercised in such movements with a purpose in mind, the difficulty of matching means to ends implies that the outcome of their actions is always likely to be in question. There is, as we shall see, a forward-looking element to experimentation that, in pragmatic terms, draws our attention to the use, not the possession, of power. As such, it shares with a Foucauldian account of power a concern with ‘how’ power works, rather than with ‘who’ wields it or has it bestowed upon them. 2.2. Anti-foundational practices A concern with the expedient, experimental aspects to power gleaned from Dewey’s associational thinking also points to an anti-foundational stance that is characteristic of pragmatist thought, both old and new (see Barnes, 2008). If one takes this view seriously, it would suggest that there are no pre-existing powers out there waiting to be wielded or unleashed, nor any predetermined outcomes based upon the unequal distribution of resources. This con-

trasts sharply with a more conventional, dispositional view of power which gauges the effectiveness of an organization by the size and magnitude of the resources at its disposal – regardless as to whether they are used or not. Where power is deemed to be a latent capacity in this manner, the more resources at one’s disposal are often assumed to equal greater power and as such the ability to prevail over those with fewer resources leads to predictable results (see Hindess, 1996). In a pragmatic account of power, however, it seems baffling to think why this should be so: resources and power are not the same thing and an abundance of the former does not predetermine which individuals or organizations are capable of bringing about effective social change. Resources, when considered in an anti-foundational manner, may be misused, wasted or applied to little effect; situations change, open up in unpredictable ways, and alter the ongoing course of events; what works best in one context may fail to work in another, or is only partially effective, and so on and so forth. From the standpoint of the here and now, a range of outcomes would appear possible, from the misapplication of resources by political agencies to their miscalculation or over estimation. In some instances, incompetence and ignorance may even come into play. All of which suggests that what matters in this pragmatic line of reasoning is how such resources are used to produce the tenuous effect that we call power. More to the point, what works best in any given situation cannot be known in advance, only in practice. Alberto Melucci’s (1989,1996) account of collective action and contemporary social movements has something of this tenuous feel about it. For him, it would appear that collective actors do not so much wield power as mobilize resources often on a loose and tenuous basis and draw upon their campaigning skills to be effective in achieving their political aims. The degree to which they are effective appears to lie outside of their control and is judged by the extent to which people across the globe are networked and mobilized to bring about the desired ends. Where such campaigns are not sustained by mutual action or agreed practices, the power to bring about change seems to all but evaporate. The strategic expertise and organizational skills of the core actors more or less remain as before, as do the material and informational resources of the groups, but if they are not put to good use or are misused then no amount of stockpiled resources can make much of a difference. Crucially, there is an element of ‘doing’ that appears critical to an understanding of the way power is exercised by social movements (see McDonald, 2006, on the practices of global social movements). 3. Placed by power In the pragmatist reading of power woven together thus far I have made reference to activist movements in an attempt to illustrate the more expedient character of the ‘power to’ get things done. Whilst power in this pragmatic

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sense is practised before it is possessed, that does not mean to suggest that it is simply a tool used as a ‘force for good’. Power of whatever kind can work for people or it can work against them; it can block social change as well as bring it about. Seen from a different angle, the ‘power to’ act may look suspiciously like the power that is exercised over others to stop them from acting. As Giddens (1977) recognized, exercising power as a means to an end does not only entail acts of facilitation, it may just as easily involve the power to obtain leverage over others, where the instrumental purpose is to gain advantage. In such moments, power is experienced more as a force which puts us in place. Without wishing to labour the point, the powers of constraint and imposition may be understood pragmatically in just the same way as the powers of facilitation. Resources may be put to use with a purpose in mind and what works best in any given setting to obtain leverage is largely down to happenstance, be it the interplay of opposing forces or the spacing and timing of people’s interactions. As such, individuals and groups may slide across one another’s lives in all kinds of awkward and unpredictable ways, yet still be engaged in the pursuit of mutually opposed goals. Such a relational setting, however, seems best understood through a discriminating grasp of the forces involved: what power is exercised to gain leverage and how, in turn, such powerful practices are acted upon by those on the receiving end. If we follow Dewey, it seems best understood through our distinctive experience of being on the receiving end of what looks and feels like an imposing act of authority, or a coercive threat, or a persuasive gesture, or the constraining effects of domination. This I would have thought to be the case whether the powerful force happens to be an NGO bent on setting ‘wrongs’ right, a monolithic corporation imposing its will upon a dispersed workforce, or a body of public officials acting in what they deem to be best for the ‘good of all’. Locating experience at the centre of things in this way is nonetheless a contentious claim and one that both James (1902, 1904) and Dewey (1905, 1934, 1935) (but categorically not Rorty, see Rorty, 1982, 1998b, 2000; also Kloppenberg, 2000) argued for, not least because, as noted earlier, concrete experience represents a practical counterpoint to foundational accounts of philosophy and life in general. A focus upon the distinctive, changing world of experience, as opposed to what many took to be the timeless and spaceless ‘truths’ of social life, offered the early pragmatists a means to distance themselves from first principles and to ground their ideas and beliefs in the contingent realm of experience (see Cutchin, 2008). Such a claim, as Martin Jay (2005) has shown in his extensive historical review of the various meanings of experience, has had its detractors in the past, from those who refused to acknowledge that such a woolly, subjective notion as experience could be the grounds of anything and, more recently, from those who, like Rorty, point to the already linguistically mediated nature of experience. But arguably there is

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something to be said for thinking about power as a first hand experience, if only to consider its practical implications. 3.1. Power as a first hand experience The category of experience, according to Jay, is notorious for the welter of meanings that have attached themselves to the notion over time and, as such, the absurdity of trying to seek anything like an ‘absolute experience’. And yet for all its chequered history, or perhaps because of it, Jay finds himself unconvinced by detractors, both past and present, and is instead drawn to what the early American pragmatists were among the first to give voice to: the tension between the experiencing subject and the object of experience. It is this relationship which, as Dewey stressed, allows for experiences to be both ‘had’, on a personal, private level, and shared with others, as part of a more public, collective culture. If post-subjective is too strong a word for it, then as Richard Bernstein (1960, 1966) noted in his assessment of Dewey, experiencing something at first hand, as part of being in society, moves us towards a more social or cultural conception of experience which, if not unique to individuals, is certainly felt subjectively. Whilst any experience, memorable or otherwise, requires interpretation, in so far as they do not speak for themselves, their practical meaning does not just rest with those having the experience, it also seems to rely upon a shared sense of what is being experienced. It is the encounter itself, the social interaction, that tells us much about what kind of brush with power is involved. As such, it cannot be inferred from the powers ‘bestowed’, no matter how assertive or imposing they may be. Moreover, if we follow Dewey’s (1917, 1934) appreciation of social interaction, such powerful experiences are not passively received; rather they are ‘taken’ in the sense that they are first interpreted, made meaningful, and responded to in ways appropriate to the interaction. This prompts us to think about how people bring their cultural skills and abilities to bear when engaged by others trying to get them to do something they might not otherwise have done. For authority to be effective, for instance, it has to be recognized and conceded, otherwise it more or less melts away (see Arendt, 1961, 1970). Government officials or scientists expounding a particular line on biodiversity and the environment, for example, may find that their authority passes unrecognized because the public distrust their motives and withhold assent. Likewise the same authority figures may engage in manipulation to achieve their desired ends only to find their concealed intent revealed by the knowledge and understanding of the groups and institutions targeted. Inducements, financial or sentimental, have to be calculated if they are to mean anything at all; coercion has to be suffered if the threat involved is to amount to more than a hollow experience; and so on and so forth (see Allen, 2003). On this understanding, power is registered in antagonistic settings through our active experience of what confronts

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us and how we respond to the engagement. It is unlikely to be grasped as an intended effect of some ‘far-off power’, but rather through a shared understanding of what is experienced subjectively. Whilst the experience of power, as Terry Eagleton (2005) has argued, may be misunderstood or misrecognized as events alter situations in often unpredictable and unpragmatic ways, if, following Dewey, it is perceived as part of a dynamic, situated process rather than an atomized, spur-of-the-moment experience, such distinctive interactions may well register how individuals, groups or organizations are exercising us and to what end. If this is considered over time, as the interplay of opposing forces shifts, then in strict pragmatic fashion what works best to obtain leverage may also shift, as well may the effectiveness of any particular action. Cori Hayden (2003), in her account of the promise and threat of bioprospecting in Mexico, has described some of the powerful manoeuvres undertaken over time by corporate and allied actors in the biotech industry and the different kinds of brushes with power involved. As she convincingly shows, corporate practices have succeeded one another or, depending on the turn of events, run in parallel in an attempt to put a variety of publics in their place. In the face of a succession of protest events and public mobilizations throughout the 1980s and 1990s, US drug and biotechnology companies tried to find a way around concerted political opposition to their bioprospecting forays in the South by switching from the practice of dominating cash-poor but gene-rich indigenous communities to a strategy of inducement involving enhanced royalties and the promise of benefit sharing should pharmaceutical success follow. At the same time, US drug companies appealed over the heads of narrowly-focussed campaign groups to wider publics by attempting to seduce them into believing what they might not otherwise have done; namely, that such forays could eventually lead to new life-saving drugs and the reduction of pain and human suffering. Over and above that, corporate actors in the industry manoeuvred themselves into a new position of domination and constraint by gaining a monopoly over specific life forms through the use of patents and intellectual property rights. Using patent laws in this way to monopolize, for instance, the genetic materials of a particular plant developed by an indigenous community for healing purposes aims to restrict access to its future use and opens up the resource to future commercial application (see also Bingham, 2006; Goldman, 1998; Flitner, 1998; Zerner, 2000). Not all the manoeuvres were effective, and some only partially so, but that is precisely what pragmatism brings to the fore. Whatever view one takes on such an interplay of forces, the key point is that such mutating relationships between corporate players and publics are not exceptional; they represent an expedient form of power, where what works best is a tenuous affair and one that is reflected through the uneven experience of those on the receiving end. The fallible nature of the interaction also points up the more tenuous side to institutional and organizational power, where,

as noted earlier, the size and magnitude of resources is not all that matters and what is seemingly powerful ‘on the outside’ is not necessarily the case in practice. This may serve to remind us that exercising power with a purpose in mind, acting to bring about a particular outcome, are to paraphrase Foucault, 1984 intentional aspects of any nonsubjective arrangement of power. As inferred in the first part of the paper, what ‘powerful’ corporations, NGOs and campaigning groups set out to do is not necessarily what they end up achieving, and nor are the consequences always the ones that they had in mind. Things turn out differently on the ground, so to speak. That, I would suggest, is primarily what a pragmatist reading of power has to offer geographers: power understood as an expedient practice, anti-foundational in character, and grasped through our situated experience of it. However, there is also the contextual and contingent character of power to consider, from which a pragmatist reading draws much of its sense and meaning. It is in respect of these spatial and temporal aspects that arguably geography has something to offer back to pragmatism, and conceivably to our understanding of the ways in which power works in a radically contingent world.

4. Power without guarantees Context and contingency have long had a special relevance to geographers, most obviously because of their close identification with acknowledged qualities of place and locale (see Cutchin, 2008). It would seem, however, that the connection is more a family resemblance than anything systematic on the part of pragmatists. Context and contingency, in the pragmatist’s vocabulary, are more often ways of foregrounding the fact that events are unpredictable or unforeseeable, rather than any specific concern with spatial differentiation and the uneven geography of the world. The eventualities which make a difference to people’s lives do often appear to take place in contexts which are less than predictable, the result of contingent circumstances, but few geographers would be surprised by that. It is not that geographers do not take seriously the fact that individuals and groups react to events in unanticipated ways or that circumstances often turn out differently to those planned, but rather that there is often more to a spatial context than a series of bounded contingencies. Space, as it is frequently observed, is not a backdrop to events but, following Massey (2000, 2005), is itself an active construction formed through practices and relations, many of which are folded in from elsewhere and may involve messy co-existences and awkward social juxtapositions. Power in such contexts is arguably both entangled in such arrangements (Sharp et al., 2000) and spatially ambiguous in terms of its outcomes (Allen, 2005). On this understanding, it is the spaces, or geographical contexts, in which events are thrown together which suggests that power is always without guarantees. Much of this chimes with prag-

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matist thinking, but, to my mind, it also refines and adds to it. 4.1. Contexts all the way down? Rorty is rather fond of responding to those who believe that we can really know what something is – power, in this instance – outside of the web of relations in which it is embedded by insisting that, on the contrary, ‘it is contexts all the way down’ (1991, p. 100). What he means by this is that, because things come to us under a certain description they are already contextualized, as it were, so there is little point in trying to arrive at what something like power ‘intrinsically’ is aside from all the possible contexts in which it may be exercised. Within geography, Trevor Barnes (1983,1989) was among the first to advocate the importance of thinking about the difference that context makes to our understanding of the broad forces which shape the economic landscape and the descriptions under which they are known to us (see also, Sunley, 1996). He is careful to point out that he is not simply arguing that because contexts differ they automatically skew or slant the impact that social forces have from place to place, but rather that those very forces only take on meaning when grounded in a particular place. It is the contextual grain of places, the interplay of their social, economic and cultural dynamics, which give forces their shape, not the other way around. On this view, because nothing is precontextual, there is no question of lifting things out of place. The use of power in practice is decidedly not about placing the exercise of power in context; rather the exercise of power comes ‘with contexts attached’, as Rorty would have it. It is not power, first, and then place ‘added in’ to see what difference it makes; power on this view is always already spatial. In this respect, Barnes has taken pragmatist thinking a step further by drawing attention to the interplay or entanglement of economic and social forces which give places their ‘contextual grain’. More than this, he is not simply saying that place and context make a difference to the way that something like power works out in practice, but rather that such social relationships actually take their shape from the cross-cutting, tangled set of forces which happen to come together in one location. That such forces may come from afar or be part of power arrangements elsewhere adds to the unsettled nature of events and merely serves to underpin the provisional nature of power outlined earlier. The unbound nature of geographical spaces and contexts should thus be a feature of any account which seeks to explain the spatial ambiguities of power: why the close presence of a distant corporate authority may pass unrecognized, yet domination at-a-distance prove to be effective, or why arms length manipulation on the part of governments may work better than up-front inducements mediated by front line agencies. Bronwyn Parry’s (2004) investigation of the global bioprospecting industry over the 1980s and 1990s makes for

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interesting reading in this respect. She set out to explore the power relationships behind the establishment and continued operation of the new resource economy in bio-information, tracing the actions of governments, research institutes, conservation agencies, NGOs, as well as pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. What comes across is less a contextual account of the dominant power relationships involved and more an insight into the messy dynamics that call forth responses that are difficult to anticipate and seemingly impossible to foretell, yet add up to a series of intentional acts which, in hindsight, look to be far more coherent and bounded than they actually were. Although it is impossible to do justice to the richness of her case study, she found: companies trying to source a particular genetic or biochemical resource from more than one location playing-off locations to negotiate favourable benefit sharing agreements, yet entirely dependent on the reactions of interested parties elsewhere, some of whose responses appeared to contradict their apparent interests. Governments insisting on agreements prior to giving permission for collection to proceed, yet failing to monitor subsequent proceedings, and holding such unrealistic expectations about the future worth of indigenous resources as to make the whole process of acquisition unviable. Government-funded research institutes and university departments seeking the latest technology to enable them to undertake their own biochemical extractions from local materials in exchange for granting rights of exclusive access to a particular biotech company, only to find themselves manipulated into providing a more effective extractions facility for the company in question. And finally, environmental campaign groups, alert to the possibility of ‘biopiracy’, who viewed the inducement of royalties from future commercial exploitation with deep distrust simply because of the difficulties of keeping track of the successive uses made of the genetic materials over lengthy periods of time. Perhaps the term ‘radical contingency’, drawn upon by Richard Bernstein in his work (1991, p. 328), is a better description of such events and offers a more appropriate sense of what is involved in the ‘doings’ of power (see also, Shusterman, 1997). Although even this term arguably fails to do justice to the kind of spatial arrangement that Doreen Massey has in mind when she refers to the ‘chance of space’ (2005, pp. 111–117). 4.2. The chance of space Massey (2005) is keen to point out that, in referring to the ‘chance of space’, she is not endorsing a celebration of the glorious indeterminacy of all things. Her spatial thesis is not an ontological assertion that all things are now in flux; on the contrary, she wants to convey the role that happenstance and chance have to play in the way that different actors come into contact or are separated by the interventions of those seeking to bring about change. The jumble of arrangements that she has in mind are not the product of

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total randomness, but rather the combination of calculated interventions and those that can largely be put down to chance. There is something of the accidental in all contexts and spaces on this view, much of which is drawn from elsewhere, from events and relationships that lie outside the immediate here and now. Indeed, the ‘global’ context, the actions of those not present, are critical to how things work themselves out in practice. The element of ‘global’ throwntogetherness that makes up events helps to reveal why the best laid plans, whether those of multinational corporations, branches of government or international NGOs, are subject to chance. I wish to briefly illustrate this spatial thesis through the mixed fortunes of Diversa, a Californian-based biotech company with global ambitions, which set out to exploit Mexico’s biological resources in the late 1990s (see Hayden, 2003; Thayer, 2003; Nadal, 2000). Operating with a clear purpose in mind and the wherewithal to achieve it, the company found itself buffeted by the forces of chance that left their attempts at so-called manipulation, inducement and appeals to authority used against them in a strikingly public manner. In fact, the company were clearly taken by surprise by the response of others and the manner in which events elsewhere played a part in the proceedings. At the outset, Diversa’s interest in Mexico’s biological resources took the straightforward form of a collaboration with one of Mexico’s leading biotechnology institutes connected to UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). The contract involved Diversa screening microbial samples for commercially viable applications from two national reserves. The company were also engaged in similar screening exercises in Costa Rica and the Yellowstone National Park in the US, working on samples that, on the face of it, had nothing to do with indigenous peoples’ knowledges or, for that matter, Mexico’s national heritage. Or so it seemed. Other actors, primarily a range of NGOs drawn from agricultural and environmental-based concerns, both local and global, saw it differently and intervened in a wider public debate involving journalists and academics which effectively saw Diversa accused of manipulating the whole affair to gain access to Mexico’s rich biodiversity – a national treasure – and exploiting it for commercial gain. Not long after, Diversa were accused of outright ‘theft’ when they sought to gain access to a common public good in exchange for the promise of royalties ostensibly a fraction of those paid to the US government for a comparable screening exercise in Yellowstone Park. The comparison between the two countries ignited a local political debate that left Diversa labelled as nothing better than an old-style ‘colonial’ predator seeking to take advantage of the poorer countries of the South. Surprised and bruised by the accusation, the company insisted that the compensation agreement struck with UNAM was the same as those brokered in Costa Rica and the US. High profile articles in the Mexico City daily, La Jornada, ensured however that the ‘biopiracy’ image stuck to Diversa.

Diversa then found its authority challenged by the ‘theft’ accusation, which left a number of government federal agencies in Mexico City unsure as to the company’s scientific standing. If commercial collecting and screening were the main activities involved, with little applied ‘work’ that could be called ‘inventive’, what grounds, it was asked, did the company have to claim its legitimate contribution towards advancing knowledge. If anything, it was claimed that bioprospecting companies like Diversa were more likely to be responsible for the erosion of indigenous knowledges, not the development of new strains, or so the Canadian-based environmental group, ETC argued. As if in recognition of this fact, the Mexican government responded by denying that consent had been granted to Diversa to exploit commercial applications in Mexico. There the matter rests. Thus, from one event it is possible to trace how the reactions and responses of a variety of parties to the interventions of Diversa in Mexico brought together a range of positions, some of which owed their ‘voice’ to the political moment and the coalitions mobilized, whilst others were practised with a clear purpose in mind. The more spontaneous responses ran alongside the more measured aims, as did the actions of those present combine with the interventions of those elsewhere, to produce a ‘global’ context that had more than an element of chance to its configuration. With hindsight, as mentioned earlier, it is always easier to piece together the turn of events and chart the powerful manoeuvres that led up to them, but it is the experience of how different actors act upon and respond to the radical contingency of ‘global’ throwntogetherness which perhaps best sums up the provisional character of power. It is largely, but not solely, in this respect that geography has something to offer back to pragmatism. 5. Spatial experiments with power In many respects, the kind of provisional arrangements of power outlined above are a testament to the fallible politics of agency involved and take us closer to Dewey’s (1916) original sense of experimentation (see also Barnes, 2008); that is, interventions taken with a purpose in mind that are decidedly uncertain as to their actual, as opposed to their intended, effects. Experimentation, for both Dewey and James, was intimately associated with experience and the articulation of a more tolerant, democratic future which rested upon people being able to bring about change and make a difference in the world. The articulation of the possible in a context of radical contingency is nonetheless an open-ended challenge and one where experimental ways of mobilizing pluralized and dispersed publics on the basis of shared experience throws up particular spatial demands. 5.1. Experimenting with connections One of Dewey’s particular concerns as large-scale industrialization gathered pace in twentieth century America was

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the loss or ‘eclipse of the public’ as a more atomized, fragmented culture threatened to overshadow the possibility for collective political action. In The Public and its Problems (1927), he was concerned to find the ties and connections which hold people together so that they may function in an engaged democratic manner. While advances in transport and communications technology held out the prospect for greater social integration, it had not in his view delivered new spaces of sociability where people recognized themselves as part of a thoroughly pluralized political community. The ties which hold men together in action are numerous, tough and subtle. But they are invisible and intangible. We have the physical tools of communication as never before. The thoughts and aspirations congruous with them are not communicated, and hence are not common. Without such communication the public will remain shadowy and formless, seeking spasmodically for itself, but seizing and holding its shadow rather than its substance. (1927, p. 142) As Alan Ryan (1995) noted in his assessment of Dewey’s life and times, it was a problem of ‘finding a public’ and knowing how best to express the complex goals of a scattered and mobile public. To be precise, for Dewey, his stance was less a lament for a ‘lost’ public and more a concern about how to recover a public appropriate to the modern, democratic condition, with its divergent mix of interests. If anything, there was ‘too much public’ (1927, p. 137), not too little, and the task was to find ways of re-connecting people without masking the real differences between them. Clive Barnett, in Culture and Democracy (2003), has posed this dilemma as a question about how to make a ‘public’ present through the mediated spaces of communication, where democracy is stretched out in time and space and mediated through political parties, social movements and other political fora. For him, the pressing issue is one of tracking the formation of ‘spaces in and through which practices of civility, tolerance and criticism can emerge’ (2003, p. 196). In that respect, modern political times are peculiar for the spatial demands that they throw up, especially if a ‘public’ is to come into being that transcends particularities of interest without erasing them. Whatever view one takes about how publics are brought into existence, there is an implied barrier of distance and fragmentation that has to be overcome should a more democratic form of communication be realised. It is not such a leap therefore to think about how one might experiment with possible ways of mobilizing a pluralized and dispersed ‘public’ on the basis of shared experience. If this speaks to a Deweyan political agenda, Iris Young (1990, 2000, 2001) has progressed it in recent decades through her critique of deliberative democracy and her support for a more engaged, responsible form of democratic communication. Through her advocacy of a broader understanding of the generation and influence of public opinion, she has

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endorsed a more activist notion of the ‘public’ constructed around appeals to justice and claims of injustice that, purportedly, involve us all and from which it is not possible to opt out (Young, 2001). A key part of Young’s argument is that activists and, more generally, social movements have been able to construct ‘publics’ by connecting peoples’ normal, everyday practices to forms of harm and injustice that are global in their breadth. In particular, her interests lie with the obligations of justice that arise from heightened global interdependence and how civil society movements have enhanced the scope and reach of their power by experimenting with ways of making ‘publics’ present around such issues as global climate change, the destruction of the rain forests and overseas factory sweatshop exploitation. The latter issue, in particular, was one that she examined at length to understand the nature of the claims put forward by the student-based antisweatshop movement in the United States (Young, 2003, 2004; see also Cravey, 2004) and, by implication European-based NGOs and campaign groups like Oxfam, Christian Aid and the Clean Clothes Campaign. As Young sees it, the construction of a ‘public’ around overseas sweatshop exploitation arose because the everyday shopping habits of those in the West could be traced directly to economic exploitation on the far side of the globe. The crux of the matter, for her, is that consumers in the West benefit from cheap clothing and whilst they are not to blame for the harm done to workers elsewhere, they nonetheless bear some responsibility for the conditions under which their purchases are produced. Iris Young is a political philosopher who saw herself as someone engaged in critical democratic theory and practice and, perhaps for that reason, was less concerned to follow up exactly what is involved in constructing such responsibilities at-a-distance. Of interest to geographers, though, is by what pragmatic means such dispersed ‘publics’ were mobilized and how the antisweatshop movement coped with the barriers of fragmentation and distance. Elaine Hartwick’s (2000) careful observations on what shape a geographical politics of consumption might take suggest a range of possible interventions that connect consumers directly to producers, one of which involves the much publicized strategy of fixing upon the company logos and advertisements of the big retail corporations and subverting their original meaning by associating them directly with abuse in overseas sweatshops (see Klein, 2000; Oxfam, 2004). Experimenting with semiotics in this manner, turning the dynamic of the brand-based multinationals against itself, created a space for activists to sidestep the tangled arrangements of subcontracting and draw the far-off closer politically. In response to the distance created by the overlapping chains of buyers and suppliers, trading companies and sourcing agents, which characterize most garment industry supply chains (see Hale and Wills, 2005), campaign groups like the Dutch-based Clean Clothes Campaign were able to establish an immediate connection between what was going on ‘over there’ with decisions

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taken in the corporate boardrooms ‘back here’ in Europe and North America. The successful ‘No Sweat’ campaign, for instance, used the logo artwork of Adidas, Puma, Gap and Nike, among others, to isolate ‘the problem’ and place responsibility for what was previously seen as faraway back in the hands of the corporate retailers. In practice, such campaigns effectively collapsed the economic distance created by the market which, hitherto, had separated the producer from the consumer (see Allen, 2006). The networked mobilization of a ‘public’ in this manner, by activists hitting upon a practical means of persuading – or manipulating – consumers to bring direct pressure to bear on the corporate retailers to effect change among their distant suppliers, suggests one of the ways in which NGOs experimented with connections to achieve a specific political goal (see also Johns and Vural, 2000; Traub-Werner and Cravey, 2002). Such interventions also reflect a knowledge of the geographical differences in the leverage and scope of the various actors involved in the garment industry – not just consumers and retailers, but also governments, trade unions, supply agents and factory owners – and where best to apply pressure to achieve the desired political ends (see Herod, 1998). The shift to a ‘multiple pressure point’ strategy, as practised by the Clean Clothes Campaign, for instance, with its network of alliances within Europe and beyond, represents a calculated attempt to compound the impact of such interventions by simultaneously applying pressure at different points along the supply chain. The closure of a garment factory in Thailand, for example, was campaigned against among consumers in Europe and the US, but also in Hong Kong where the factory owner’s headquarters were subjected to an activist campaign (Clean Clothes Campaign, 2006). The mobilization of political energies in this instance represented an expedient means of effecting change through a sequence of interventions along the length and breadth of the supply chain, albeit one hedged by contingency and the possibility of disconnection should the ‘public’ fail to recognize their responsibility to a far-off form of exploitation. Rebecca Johns and Leyla Vural’s (2000) work on the US-based ‘Stop Sweatshops Campaign’ and the role of unions and civic groups within it also captured the fallible nature of the politics involved in this kind of activism, the experimental shifts in strategy, and the difficulty of transcending particularities of interest within the campaign. Their account echoes Arendt’s (1958) grasp of the fact that the mobilization of a ‘public’, in Dewey’s sense of the term, is a precarious, unstable affair, more akin to a temporary unity around an agreed purpose than anything more lasting and permanent (see also Silvey, 2004; Miller, 2004; Routledge, 2003). Shared experience, to follow Dewey, nonetheless provides the potential for spatial experiments with the ‘power to’ act with others and the formation of what Paul Routledge (2003) has called, ‘convergence spaces’: dispersed social coalitions of place-based actors which have to grapple with the barriers of distance and fragmentation to forge collective political action with a

clear purpose in mind (see also Panelli, 2007, on time–space geometries of activism). There is a certain spatial praxis to this that, in some pragmatist hands, namely those of Richard Bernstein (1971), would very likely see such instances of activism as indistinguishable from the power to make a difference in a radically contingent world (see also, Benhabib and Fraser, 2004). 6. Conclusion The purpose of this paper has been twofold, first, to explore what a pragmatic account of power might look like and its potential value for geographers and, second, turning that around, to show what geography can add to our understanding of the ways in which power is practised. On the former, I have tried to draw out what I take to be some of the salient characteristics of a pragmatist reading of power; namely, its expedient, anti-foundational view of power, one that is grounded in our shared experience of it as a dynamic relationship. If this interpretation is accepted, it sets apart a pragmatist reading from the more conventional view of power as an inscribed capacity waiting to be deployed, and the all to easy assumption that size matters and that more resources equals greater power. The potentially unsettling nature of this claim is that any institution, big or small, should be judged by the expedient ways in which it uses resources to produce the tenuous effect that is power and not by its organizational or geographical size. In this respect, a pragmatist reading shares a practice-based approach with Foucaldian-inspired accounts of power, although the stress placed upon the open, experimental nature of social action distinguishes it from the latter’s stress upon normative apparatuses of rule that effectively serve to close options down. Nonetheless, the freedom that Foucault insists people have to govern themselves, to bring themselves to order, does play to a Deweyan-style emphasis upon the autonomy of human agency and the role of self development (see also, Rorty, 1991). The enabling side to power that is present in much of Foucault’s work is also evident in pragmatist accounts which foreground the ‘power to’ make a difference in the world, to intervene to bring about social change. The thrust of the analysis may be different, as are the implications for our understanding of the uses to which power is put, but the empowerment dimension is one that is common to both. What is perhaps more in evidence in Foucaldian approaches is the tension between an enabling and a constraining element to power, where the ability of people to make themselves up and fashion their own futures slides into an instrumental form of power that puts us in place (see, for instance, Dean, 1999; Rose, 1999). As I have had cause to stress, however, a pragmatic reading of power is not simply there for geographers to adapt and mould. A more refined sense of the difference that space and spatiality make to the way that power works is what geography can offer pragmatism in return. Moving away from the notion that space is merely some kind of

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contextual backdrop towards an appreciation that the far reaching relations through which places are actively constructed can make a difference to the exercise of institutional authority or corporate domination, for example, is precisely what geography may tell us. The significance of wider geographies to how power exercises us in place, the manner in which events elsewhere are folded into the here and now, are part of a geographical reconfiguration of power that both context and contingency strain to convey. What is perhaps often missed or overlooked is that it is the ‘global’ throwntogetherness of events which actually accounts for much of the provisionality of power and, indeed, why it comes without guarantees. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Trevor Barnes, Susan Smith and Nichola Wood for their insight and comment on the paper, as well as those generously provided by the three anonymous referees. References Allen, J., 2003. Lost Geographies of Power. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford. Allen, J., 2004. The whereabouts of power: politics, government and space. Geografiska Annaler 86b (1), 19–32. Allen, J., 2005. Arms length imperialism? Political Geography 24, 531– 541. Allen, J., 2006. Claiming connections: a distant world of sweatshops? In: Robinson, J., Rose, G., Barnett, C. (Eds.), A Demanding world. The Open University, Milton Keynes, pp. 7–50. Arendt, H., 1958. The Human Condition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. Arendt, H., 1961. Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought. Faber and Faber, London. Arendt, H., 1970. On Violence. Harvest, San Diego. Barnes, T., 1989. Structure and agency in economic geography and theories of economic value. In: Kobayaski, A., Mackenzie, S. (Eds.), Remaking Human Geography. Unwin Hyman, London, pp. 134–148. Barnes, T., 2008. American pragmatism: Towards a geographical introduction. Geoforum 39 (4), 1542–1554. Barnes, T., Curry, M., 1983. ‘Towards a contextualist approach to geographical knowledge’ Transactions, Institute of British Geographers 8 (4), 467–482. Barnett, C., 2003. Culture and Demoncracy: Media, Space, Representation. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Benhabib, S., 1992. Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. Polity, Cambridge. Benhabib, S., 1996. The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. Sage, London and Thousand Oaks, CA. Benhabib, S., Fraser, N., 2004. Pragmatism, Critique, Judgement: Essays for Richard J. Bernstein. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Bernstein, R.J., 1960. John Dewey: On Experience, Nature and Freedom. The Liberal Arts Press, New York. Bernstein, R.J., 1966. John Dewey. Washington Square Press, Inc., New York. Bernstein, R.J., 1971. Praxis and Action. University of Philadelphia Press, Philadelphia. Bernstein, R.J., 1991. The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity. Polity, Cambridge. Bingham, N., 2006. Bioprospecting and the global entanglement of people, plants and pills. In: Massey, D., Clark, N., Sarre, P. (Eds.), A World in the Making. The Open University, Milton Keynes, pp. 105–151.

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