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Towards a materialist conception of geography
Geoforum,
Pergamon
Vol. 11, pp. 171-178, 1980. Press Ltd. Printed in Great Britain.
Towards
A Materialist Conception Geography JAMES ANDERSON*,
Milton Keynes,
of
U.K.
Geography has been traditionally concerned with “Nature”, “Place” and to their study and analysis “Space”, and yet has failed to make profound contributions because the discipline lacks a consistent theory of society and its relationships with “Nature”. This paper examines some of the reasons for this deficiency and proposes that Historical Materialism provides the best framework for resolving this problem.
Abstract:
“time-space geography”, issues”, or other means.
Introduction
Geography has traditionally had three main concerns - with “Nature”, “Place” and “Space”. But ironically for a discipline with traditional pretensions to be “the mtegratin science” it has lacked a conceptual framewor a capable of integrating even its own concerns. This lack was a feature of the discipline when it was dominated by natural “environmentalism” and by “regionai differentiation” and it partly accounts for the fall from dominance of both these “schools”. The subse uent rise of “spatial analysis” promised a uni9 ied discipline through the conscious adoption of a positivist eprstemology which was supposedly applicable to alI areas of scientific inqurry. In fact it led to unpreNot only were cedented fragmentation. “Nature”, “Place”, and “Space” increasingly separate concerns, there also developed a plethora of different approaches and separate sub-strands within “spatial analysis”. Geogra h became an eclectic mish-mash which de PB le attempts to find a coherent synthesis, whether through “general systems theory”,
* Dept. of Geography, The Open University, Hail, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA.
Walton
a focus on “policy
The reasons for this unsatisfactory state of affairs are bound up with the history of the discipline, with its varying epistemological and ontological bases, its inconsistent con! ceptions of “Space” and methods of abstraction, its oscillations between subjective idealism and mechanical materialism. They aIso involve Geography’s dependence on other social science drsuplines, the fragmentary nature of much of their theory, and indeed the counterproductive nature of arbidisciplinary boundaries. Attempts to tra fin ? a coherent nthesis were ham ered by “Geographical” b“yinkers. They faile B because they were confined in the strait-jacket of a discipline which lacks a consistent theory of society and its relationships with Nature. “materialist conception of history” The developed by MARX constitutes such a theory, and rt incorporates a conception of Geography. This short paper [I] argues that it provides a fruitful perspective on the relationships between “Man’ and “Nature”, and between the uniqueness of “Place” and the generality of “Space”. It is not presented as an automatic or unproblematic~ answer to 171
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Geo a hy’s problems, simpl as the best avai ab e conceptual framewor within which geographers can tackle particular problems, relate their concerns to other areas of social . . and use the partial insi hts of other 2:; :rines and paradigms wit Kout lapsing into eclecticism. The problems examined within the context of Geography cannot be solved within the boundaries of the disci line, nor can the potential of the subject pbe realised without such a nondisciplinary framework. With it, the traditional pretensions of geographers to practice “integratin science” could become a reality. Like all i%eologies with some sta ing power, these pretensions were not entire Yy without foundation, but between them and reality there was a yawning gulf because of the poverty of theory in Geography.
“Nature”
and Historical
Materialism
The “Nature-Man” debate between Environmental Determinism and Possibilism disappeared up a philoso hical cul-de-sac in the 1950’s because bot Fl groups shared a simplistic conce tion of “Nature”. Determinists practice B a crude materialism from which the Possibilists made only a partial and essential1 idealist escape. “Man” could choose Yrom among the “possibilities” presented by the physical environment, but it was “Man” in the abstract, and the conception of societal constraints on his actions was woefully inadequate. True, there were many rich studies of pre-capitalist rural societies. However, the preoccupation with when dealing with a use values, fruitful was insufficient for “natural economy”, societies where goods are produced for sale and rofitability is the intervening (exchange value r; criterion of what is produced, or not as for instance in an economic produced, crisis (HARRISON, 1978). Ideologies have the conservative effect of hampering the reco nition of new problems (ANDERSON, 1973 f . Environmentalism was particularly outdated, stuck in the era of where economic crises ‘natural economy” arose mainly from “natural disasters” rather than structural features of society. It recognised that “Man” changed the physical environment but failed to appreciate the
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historical processes of change in “Man’s” own social nature which this involved. In a capitalist context it did not appreciate the transformation of nature into physical commodities, nor recognise fixed capital in the landscape as capital. Its limited conce tion of “Nature” was not easily extendab Pe to modern society. This helps explain both the relative neglect of Urban Geo aphy (long after the majority of the Britis a population was urbanised), and the subsequent distortions of its development, first in an environmentalist direction (TAYLOR , 1949), and later in spatial determinism and the abstract world of Spatial Analysis. Rather than find a viable replacement for a conception that had failed, mainstream Geogra hy dro ped its explicit concern with t Ke onto 7ogy of “Nature”. Just how impoverished it remained can be seen from the erspective of Historical Materialism. In its E;ialectical conception, Man (and Woman) is part of “Nature” but is capable of consciously transforming it through productive labour. In this historical process of transforming external “Nature” and increasing his control over it, Man transformed his own human nature and social organisation. “The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life, and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure . . . the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged.” (ENGELS, 1880).
Nature, human and non-human, is not fixed but interacts continuously. The unity of “Man” and “Nature” is thus mediated by human consciousness and social class structure. It changes through history and over geogra hit space (BURGESS, 1978). In classdivide B societies, “Man” is alienated from “Nature” and his own human nature. In capitalism, for instance, “Nature” is transformed for profit, not directly accordin to human needs; the products are alienated fgrom their immediate producers who, in most cases, do not control their own labour processes (BRAVERMAN, 1974); workers, white-collar as well as blue-collar, are treated as a com-
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modity, labour-power, bought in the “labour market” - or mcreasingly consigned to unemployment, as in the present world crisis of profitability which ‘ dictates” a massive underutilization of existing capital and human resources despite an increase m human needs. We have moved a long way from the mechanical materialism of the Environmental Determinists, and from abstract “Man”choosing presented by the from the “possibilities” natural environment. Marx developed his “materialist conception of through a materialist critique of history” Hegel’s idealist view of history and by fusing materialist and idealist strands in previous philosophies. It can be summed up by two quotations: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (MARX and ENGELS, 1848).
brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogma also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form”. (ENGELS, 1890).
The essence of Historical Materialism clearly expressed by PLEKHANOV, ‘father of Russian marxism’:
“Social relationships have their inherent logic . . . But if I know in what direction social relations are changing . . . I am able to influence it . . . Hence, in a certain sense, I can make history, and there is no need for me to wait while ‘it is being made’ . . . change never takes place ‘by itself’; it always needs the intervention of men . . . men who do more than others . . . are called great men. But great is a relative concept. In the ethical sense every man is great who, to use the Biblical phrase, ‘lays down his life for his friend’.” (PLEKHANOV, 1940).
materialism, therefore, does not pretend to be “predictive”. It is not a determinism. It tries to analyse the possibilities latent in past and present social processes their “inherent logic”; but the future always rests finally with the future “makers of history” and the unpredictable outcomes of stru les between them. As already mentionowever, it is not unproblematical: there ed, ‘fig are, for instance, problems if the “base-superstructure” metaphor is interpreted too literally; the relationships between “the logic of capital accumulation ’ and other historical and political factors, are the subject of serious disagreements and debates between Marxists; friend and foe alike have often seriously misrepresented Marx’s ideas and disagreed over their interpretation. For example, GE o R G reviewing N. LUKACS BUKHARIN’S Historical Materialism criticised his Natural Science bias which led him to the false conclusion that, in principle, prediction is as possible in Social as in Natural Science, and towards Technological determinism - “a somewhat refined version of the ‘environmental’ theories of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” (which, we can add, lived on in Geo a hy up to the midCentury v . uch disagreements Twentieth can be fruitful, but in some cases, in Geography as elsewhere, the misrepresentation of Marxism is motivated by a political hostility which MARX’s
and “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past” (MARX, 1859).
mechanical materialisms In contrast to (environmentalism or its modern equivalents, technological and spatial determimsm, or a fixed “human nature” account of social proHistorical Materialism recognises cesses), ideas - human and class consciousness - as central to the historical process, but ideas placed in their historical context. MARX himself wrote: “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating.” (MARX, 1845).
And ENG E LS replied “economic determinism”
to the charge by saying:
of
“The economic situation is the basis but the various elements of the superstructure - political forms of the class struggle and its results . . . even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the
was the
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makes (LUKACS,
sensible 1975).
discussion
difficult
[2]
That said, Geogra hy has much to learn from these ideas and de 1 ates, not least on questions of method and the relationships between Place and Space.
Historical
Materialism
and Geographic
Space
The “Regional Differentiation” school emphasised the uniqueness of “Place” and failed to relate “the particular” to “the general” because it also lacked a coherent social theory a lack sometimes proclaimed as a virtue! An influential paper by SAUER (1925), for example, advocated “the re ression of a riori theories” when analysing t Ke content o P landscape. Such empiricist attitudes resulted in an “imaginery concreteness”, even, or perhaps especially, in the study of particular places or re ions. The surface appearance of landscape, “t 1 e facts” of “Place ‘, were often inadequately related to underlying social processes within and beyond the “Place” being studied. Despite subsequent developments in Spatial concreteness” of Analysis, the “imaginary empiricism is still a widespread characteristic of Geography. At issue is the appropriate method of analysis and abstraction. MARX’S (18574) discussion of an inap ropriate method in Political Economy w11P have a familiar ring to geographers: . . . it seems correct to start with the real and concrete elethe division of ments . . with its population, the population into classes, town and country, the coast, the different branches of production, export and import . etc. . . . However, on closer examination, this proves false. Population is an abstraction if, for instance, one disregards the classes of which it is composed . . classes remain empty terms if one does not know the factors on which they depend, e.g., wage-labour capital, and so on. These presuppose exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. . Thus, if one were to take population as the point of departure, it would be a chaotic conception of a complex whole . .” [ 31 “When examining a given country
The resemblance with Regional Geography is strikin (except that it often started with natura B environment and did not progress as
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far as “classes”!). MARX described it as the method of the early economists of the Seventeenth Century [4] . He went on to show how economic theory was developed by moving analytically from the “imaginary concrete” starting point of population “towards ever more simple concepts . . . ever thinner abstrations until one discovered a few decisive abstract, general relations such as . . . labour, division of labour, need, value, etc. . . .” and he pays tribute to the “immense step forward” by ADAM SMITH when he cut through all the particular forms of wealthcreating activity to discover the abstract, universal concept of Zabour, and the universality of the roducts of labour as embodying past objecti Pred (or materialised) labour [S] . Using these abstract analytical concepts, “the journey has to be retraced in the opposite direction until one arrives at the population again, which is this time not a chaotic conception of the whole, but a rich totality of many determinations and relations . The latter is obviously the scientifically correct method. The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration (or synthesis) of many determinations . .” [ 31 .
Mainstream ground to “journey” directions at
Geography has still considerable make up in completing this indeed it is still travelling in both once!
There was an advance in the use of abstraction in Spatial Analysis from the 1950’s, but it was applied one-sidedly only to “spatial” concepts. NYSTUEN (1963) identified three: distance, direction, and connection (or relative position). Arguing that other concepts or “accessibility” such as “neighbourhood” of them, he conare sim ly “compounds” sidered ! is three basic concepts “sufficient to employ the geo a hical point of view . . . in all branches o FrKt e discipline _ . . physiography, cultural . . economic . . (etc.)“. to integrate Physical and Thus appeared Human Geo aphy as a unified “spatial science”, wit a out the need for a theory of nature or society. However, this is an idealist use - or rather misuse - of abstraction; it abstracts some of the “bathwater” and loses most of the “baby”. Concepts applicable equally to physical or social processes are so abstract that on their own they have no necessary connection with either. They cannot be applied to particular processes, or
Geoforum/Volume ll/Number2/1980
built up into useful “compounds”., without additional concepts which relate employin specifical Py to those processes. But if three spatial concepts were “sufficient”, these additional concepts could be left unexamined, and in Spatial Analysis they generally were. conce ts of Spatial The highly abstract Analysis were based on forma P eometry, and their “content” was often supp f ied by adding concepts from other disciplines whose bases, certainly in the case of Social Sciences, were also idealist in many instances 161. The basic geometry emphasised on1 a “relative” conan J’ could not satisception of ‘ Space”, factorily encompass an “absolute” conception of the specifictty of “Place” 171. Indeed, Spatial Analysis developed by counterposing the two conceptions rather than inte~atin them. BUNGE (1966), an imaginative an % forthright pioneer, rejected as “unscientific” Geography s concern with the uniqueness of were to be sought “Place’ . Generalisations but in an abstract geometry of reIative spaces. He dispensed with the problem of the relationship between the “general” and the that Regional Geo“unique” b insistin graphy shou i/d deal on By with “generic” rather than “uni ue facts”. However, the theories which de 2me and classify certain facts as were not examined; and the “ eneric” a %solute location of events in time and space was not recognised as one of their defining characteristics. Geography was the loser. The earlier emphasis on the ontological rimacy of natural environment was replaced primacy of Natural Fzy the epistemological Science (GREGORY, 1978),or, perhaps more accurately, b the primacy of “philosphers of science” su x as POPPER who based their e istemological procedures on ?n essentially a Ristorical conceptron of Physics (how do physicists “refute ’ their theories of the origin of the universe, by re eated “experiments”? of what was, presuma \ ly, a unique event?). onto10 ical issues The were ignored (HARVEY, 15 69) [S} and environmentalism was replaced by spatial determinism. Instead of being unified b a positivist methodolo~ supposedly applica Elle to all science irres ective of content, Geography experience C-funprecedented fragmentation. Sub-disciplines mushroomed as a wide range of other disciplines were ransacked to put flesh on the dry bones of geometrical concepts. It was
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“fun being a Geographer”, you could keep to go in all sorts of “your options open different directions! This was often benifical, as in the increased contact with various parts of Social Science, but it did not rovide a coherent theory of society. Socia P Science also suffers from fragmentation into separate disciplines and subduciplines: from arbitrary admmistrative divisions typically based on idealist forms of abstraction [9] . In addition, the oscillation between crude materialism and subjective idealism, between an over-emphasis on either material conditions or people’s subjective thou hts, took on renewed force. The mechanica P materialism of early Spatial Analysis, despite its idealist basis in Neoclassical Economics [6] , brought an idealist reaction, first from “behavioural” studies of individual perceptions, and later from a stratosphere of subject“phenomenological” ivity. The separation of such corn eting “schools” into subdisciplines obscure Cf their inherent contradictions [lo] , as the inadequacies of Geography were reinforced by its administrative unity as a separate discipline. The fragmentation, and the incompatibility of many of the fragments, was increasingly seen as a problem by geographers, but, not sur risingly, attempts to find a synthesis from wit K in the discipline failed. HAGERSTRAND, one of the most creative thinkers in Spatial Analysis, noted in 197 3: “our geography is too incomplete to be able to catch the conditions which circumscribe man’s actions” [ 111 , But his answer, to add a very abstract concept of “power” and “conflict” to his “time-space geography”, ulled him back into the abstract world o P Spatial Analysis case, the materialist (and, in his particular world of Neurath’s “physicalist” sociology which tried to systematically exclude subjectivity), hoping to find the solution in a “corn~~u~~s~, of geometry and accounting proGeographers searchmg smgle-mmdedly for’ the “spatial” factor (or even the “temporal-spatial” factor) have, paradoxically, missed much that is socially significant in geographic space. Historical Materialism provides a framework for resolving the false polarities of Geogra hy; and it is a fruitful stimulus to geo ap Kical research which is systematically reffated to other areas of social inqu’ , and which real&es that “social”, as we7l as “spatial” concepts are problematic~ and have to be
176
criti+ly
examined [ 12 J . Its “nondisciplimtegratmg power has its ontological nary basis in the central dynamic of society; in capitalist society: the compulsion on capital to accumulate more capital, or risk going under to competing caprtals; the attendant, though contradictory, need to reproduce the labour- ower that reduces the surplus (e.g., throu K wages, an x state-provided services); and t l! e need to reproduce capitalist relations of production (e.g., defend property rights; prevent the direct producers appropriating their “own” surplus, and le itimate the statusquo by ideological and oIf-itical means, and, in the last resort, physica P force). This ontology enables us to relate “Space” and “Place” dialectically, seeing the “general” manifested in the ” articular”, and vice versa. This can on1 be dpone by using a theory of society whit X is constructed usin concepts that have been derived in a materia Pist way, in accordance with material reality. It involves moving from the highly abstract level of the “mode of production”, through lower levels of abstraction, to the more concrete level of particular “social formations” which are place and time specific (e.g., Britain, or one of its regions, in the 1970’s) [13]. “Social formations” are the main focus of Geography, but they cannot be properly analysed without using higher level abstractions includin “mode of production”. The problem wit I! Spatial Analysis theories was that they generally remained stuck at or above a level appropriate to analysing “modes of production” without being aware of the fact! But even when aware of it, it is not yet clear just how far a materialist analysis of geo raphic space can usefully roceed at such an a% stract level. Some of t Ke contemporuy debates between different variants of hiarxism, on questions of method and the substantive interpretation of historical and contemporary reality 1141, have a direct bearing on theoretical issues that arise in Geography. The “materialist conception of history” i.neludes a conception of Geographir. Social forces do not exist independently of time and s ace; their location in time--space is one of t Keir inherent material aspects. This is often lost sight of in modes of analysis which are idealist, or which remain at a high level of abstraction, as in much Social Science. But it was not lost sight of by MARX and other
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Marxists [ 151 . Social phenomena such as “the division of labour” or “the balance of class forces” vary from lace to place as well as through time, and tK us the “logic of capital accumulation” expresses itself very unevenly over space. Indeed, the “balance of forces” at particular places can be decisive at particular points in the history of an entire “social formation”, if unique events come to be enerulised over space (e.g. those in St. Peters%urg and Moscow in 19 17, which s read across the Russian Empire, and beyon B). In the last (and most concrete) analysis, social recesses cannot be abstracted from their Flistorical and geographical setting. Misquoting, but not I think we might add that
misinterpreting,
MARX,
“men make their awn geography . . . but in geographical circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past”.
What is needed if Geography is to overcome its fr~mentation and begin to realise its potential, is not just a Geogra hy “without adjectives” (ANUCHIN, 197 B) but geographical studies without the blinkers of a big “G”.
Notes 1.
It develops some themes outlined in two earlier Notes on Geography and Historical papers! Materialism, Social Geography and the City Seminar Series, SSRC, March 1979t and Historical Materialism and Explanation in Urban Geography delivered at the Joint Meeting of Urban and Social IBG Study Groups, London, September, 1979.
2.
LUKACS G. (1975) Tactics and Ethics: Political Essays 1919-29, Harper and Row, London, pp. 134-142. In contrast to the basic disagreements between two Marxists, such as LUKACS and BUKHARIN, some recent misrepresentations of Marxism by geographers are little more than “smear campaigns” which attempt to assign “guilt by association”. For instance, to MUIR who “saw the true face of Marxism” in Russia’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, and WAGSTAFF for whom it “not only closes the mind” but feads to “the psychiatric ward, the labour camp and the gas chamber” one can only reply, capitalism has led in that direction, Hitler was a fervent antiand many people, including many Marxist, “dissidents” in labour camps and psychiatric
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wards, do not accept Russia’s self-image as “socialist” just because it official state ideology of “Marxism” says so. As I mentioned in a debate with Richard Muir, just because Al Capone claimed his operations were strictly capitalist and “all American” is not sufficient grounds for rejecting America or capitalism. This is not the place to discuss it, but I would argue that Russia, for quite specific historical reasons was transformed into a particularly nasty state-capitalist dictatorship, but the majority of the world’s dictatorships remain good old-fashioned capitalist. MUIR R. (1979) Radical geography and Marxism Area 11, 126-1274
WAGSTAFF J.M. (1979) Dialectical materialism, geography, and catastrophe theory Area, 11, 326-332.
3.
4.
5.
6.
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MARX K. Gnrndrisse (1857-8) The Method of Political Economy. Paraphrased for brevity from: the Pelican Edition (1973), pp. 100-108, and The German ideology (Supplements Texts), Ed. C.J. ARTHUR, LAWRENCE & WISHART London (1974) pp. 140-148. See also{ FINE B. and HARRIS L. (1979) Rereading Capital, Macmillan, London, pp. 6-15: Marx’s method was to construct increasingly complex and more concrete concepts from his “few decisive abstract general relations” until the complexity of material reality was reproduced in thought. “The important point is that this process is neither purely idealist, existing in thought independent of reality, nor arbitrary . . . the concepts produced and their logical order are in accordance with material reality” (p. 7) - in contrast to a system of abstractions based on idealist concepts (e.g., Neo-ciassical Economics’ subjective theory of value) and the formal procedure of combining properties common to a whole variety of different processes (e.g., their spatial form) or building abstractions out of analogies (e.g., General Systems Theory). They started with “the population, the nation, the state, several states, etc.” In 1949, G. TAYLOR op, tit, p. 3 started with environment, race, nation, and city! “How difficult and immense a transition this was is demonstrated by the fact that Adam Smith himself occasionally &apses back into the Physiocratic system”. E.g., Neoclassical Economics (see note 3, above) and its extension in Location Theory; seea MASSEY D. (1973) Towards a Critique of Industrial Location Theory Antipode 5 (3), 3 3-39.
7.
Which may explain why NYSTUEN added a fourth concept, boundary, almost an an afterthought, without relating it to his ‘Lbasic” concepts.
8.
HARVEY D. (1969) ExpJanation in Geography, Edward Arnold, London. p. 9: “. . . the interpretation to be given to experience is itself ignored”.
9.
See note 6, above. Increased reliance on idealist Social Sciences also helped move Geography even further away from a coherent conception of “Nature”, Disciplinary and sub-disciplinary divisions have the effect of “deskilling” social scientists in ways analogous to those described by BRAVEST op. tit, 1974, for productionline and routine white-collar workers, who through the fragmentation of production processes have lost overall knowledge and control of them.
10. E.g., the idealism of “cultural geography” such as M. HESLINGA’s The Z&b Border as a CuJturaJ Divide, Assen, 1962, which overemphasises “spiritual” at the expense of ‘economic’ factors and fails to relate them; it has it crudely materialist counterpart in an “economic geography” which can discuss regional industrial policy in Northern Ireland without reference to religious dist~bu~ons, associated features of the labour market, and attendent political factors; (e.g., STEED G. and THOMAS M. (1971) Regional Industrial Change: Northern Ireland Ann. Ass. Am. Geogr., 61, 344-360).
T. The Domain of Human 11. HAGERSTRAND Geography in ~rectjons in Geo~upby, Ed. R.J. CHORLEY (1973) Methuen, London, pp. 6787. See alsol ANDERSON J. (1971) Space-time Budgets and Activity Studies in Urban Geography and Planning, Environment and Planning, 3, 353-368 - which exhibits somewhat similar limitations and others besides. 12. E.g., MASSEY D. and CATALAN0
A. (1978)
Capital and Land: Landownership by Capital in Great Britain, Edward Arnold, London.
13. See FINE and HARRIS op. tit (note 3), for a clear exposition of levels of abstraction, and their application in analysing modern capitalism. 14. E.g., THOMPSON’s polemic against the “theoreticism” of Althusser’s “structuralist Marxism” which involves the relationships between social “structures”, conscious human beings and historical change (with THOMPSON open to, but not I think fully guilty of, the counter-
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charge of “empiricism”): THOMPSON E.P., (1978) The Poverty of Theory, Merlin, London, 193-406; on the role of the towns in the rise of capitalism: Tbe Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism Ed. HILTON R. (1978) Verso, 1978; on conceptions of the contemporary western state - important in relation to “policy issues” see, e.g., State and Capital: A Marxist Debate Eds. JOLLOWAY J. and PICCIOTTO S. (1978) Edward Arnold, London. the capitalist 15. Marx’s Capital, though analysing “mode of production”, contains interesting material on the geographic space of the “social formation” of early industrial Britain - summarised in HOLLAND S. (1976) Capital versus the Region, pp. 36-47, Macmillan, London; and used in ANDERSON J. (1977) “Engels’ Manchester: Industrialization, Workers’ Housing and A Political Economy of Urban Ideologies”, Cities and Regions 1, Architectural Association Planning School, partly to highlight the inMarxism” in conadequacies of “structuralist temporary Urban Sociology. Two other examples of “geography in Marxism” are: TROTSKY L. (1977) The History of the Russian Revolution (1930), Pluto, London, Chapter 1 The Peculiarities of Russia’s Development, with its theory of “uneven and combined development”; and PLEKHANOV G.V. Fundamental Problems of Marxism (1908), Lawrence and Wishart, London, pp. 38-46, which draws on RATZEL to emphasise the variable importance of natural environment in conditioning, through the medium of the social relations of production, the development of the forces of production. Much work remains to be done in excavating and critically evaluating the geographical content of such marxist classics by these and other writers such as LENIN and GRAMSCI.
References ANDERSON
(1973) Ideology in Geography, 3, p. 5. ANUCHIN V.A. (1973) Theory of Geography in CHORLEY 1973 op. tit, p. 62. BRAVERMAN H. (1974) Labour and Monopoly Capital, Monthly Review Press. Antipode,
J.
5 No.
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BUNGE W. (1966) Theoretical Geography, Studies in Geography, pp. 8-13.
Lund
BURGESS R. (1978) The Concept of Nature in Geography and Marxism, Antipode, 10, No. 2. Also: SMITH N. (1978) Geography, Marx and the Concept of Nature Ms., Geography Department, Johns Hopkins University; and SAYER A. (1979) Epistemology and Conceptions of People and Nature in Geography, Ms. Sussex University. CHORLEY graphy,
R.J. (Ed.) (1973) London, Methuen.
Directions
in
Geo-
ENGLES F. (1880) Socialism: Utopian and Scientific in Marx and Engels: Selected Works (1968) Lawrence and Wishart, London, p. 411. ENGELS F. (1890) Letter to J. Bloch, p. 682 in Marx and Engels. Selected Works. GREGORY D. (1978) ideology, Science and Human Geography, Hutchinson, London. HARRISON J. (1978) Marxist Economics for Socialists: A critique of reformism, Pluto, London, pp. 20, 31. IIAGERSTRAND T. The graphy. In: CHORLEY
domain of human gco1973 op. cit. pp. 67-87.
MARX K. (1859) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, p. 96 in Marx and Engels op. cit. MARX K. (1845) Theses on Feuerback (1845), p. 28 in Marx and Engels, op. cit. MARX K. and ENGELS F. (1848) The Communist Manifesto, p. 35 in Marx and Engels: Selected Works.
NYSTUEN J.D. (1963) Identification of Some Fundamental Spatial Concepts in Spatial Analysis Eds. BERRY B.J.L. and MARBLE D.F. (1968), Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, pp. 35-41. PLEKHANOV G.V. (1940) The Role of the fndividual in History, Lawrence and Wishart, London, pp. 57, 58. SAUER C. (1925) The Morphology of Landscape, University of California Publications in Geography, Vol. 2, 2. IAYLOR G. (1949) Urban Geography, Methuen, London. (A particularly ludicrous, though influential, example of ‘environmentalism’ in Urban Geograuhy.)
Pergamon
Vol. 11, pp. 171-178, 1980. Press Ltd. Printed in Great Britain.
Towards
A Materialist Conception Geography JAMES ANDERSON*,
Milton Keynes,
of
U.K.
Geography has been traditionally concerned with “Nature”, “Place” and to their study and analysis “Space”, and yet has failed to make profound contributions because the discipline lacks a consistent theory of society and its relationships with “Nature”. This paper examines some of the reasons for this deficiency and proposes that Historical Materialism provides the best framework for resolving this problem.
Abstract:
“time-space geography”, issues”, or other means.
Introduction
Geography has traditionally had three main concerns - with “Nature”, “Place” and “Space”. But ironically for a discipline with traditional pretensions to be “the mtegratin science” it has lacked a conceptual framewor a capable of integrating even its own concerns. This lack was a feature of the discipline when it was dominated by natural “environmentalism” and by “regionai differentiation” and it partly accounts for the fall from dominance of both these “schools”. The subse uent rise of “spatial analysis” promised a uni9 ied discipline through the conscious adoption of a positivist eprstemology which was supposedly applicable to alI areas of scientific inqurry. In fact it led to unpreNot only were cedented fragmentation. “Nature”, “Place”, and “Space” increasingly separate concerns, there also developed a plethora of different approaches and separate sub-strands within “spatial analysis”. Geogra h became an eclectic mish-mash which de PB le attempts to find a coherent synthesis, whether through “general systems theory”,
* Dept. of Geography, The Open University, Hail, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA.
Walton
a focus on “policy
The reasons for this unsatisfactory state of affairs are bound up with the history of the discipline, with its varying epistemological and ontological bases, its inconsistent con! ceptions of “Space” and methods of abstraction, its oscillations between subjective idealism and mechanical materialism. They aIso involve Geography’s dependence on other social science drsuplines, the fragmentary nature of much of their theory, and indeed the counterproductive nature of arbidisciplinary boundaries. Attempts to tra fin ? a coherent nthesis were ham ered by “Geographical” b“yinkers. They faile B because they were confined in the strait-jacket of a discipline which lacks a consistent theory of society and its relationships with Nature. “materialist conception of history” The developed by MARX constitutes such a theory, and rt incorporates a conception of Geography. This short paper [I] argues that it provides a fruitful perspective on the relationships between “Man’ and “Nature”, and between the uniqueness of “Place” and the generality of “Space”. It is not presented as an automatic or unproblematic~ answer to 171
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Geo a hy’s problems, simpl as the best avai ab e conceptual framewor within which geographers can tackle particular problems, relate their concerns to other areas of social . . and use the partial insi hts of other 2:; :rines and paradigms wit Kout lapsing into eclecticism. The problems examined within the context of Geography cannot be solved within the boundaries of the disci line, nor can the potential of the subject pbe realised without such a nondisciplinary framework. With it, the traditional pretensions of geographers to practice “integratin science” could become a reality. Like all i%eologies with some sta ing power, these pretensions were not entire Yy without foundation, but between them and reality there was a yawning gulf because of the poverty of theory in Geography.
“Nature”
and Historical
Materialism
The “Nature-Man” debate between Environmental Determinism and Possibilism disappeared up a philoso hical cul-de-sac in the 1950’s because bot Fl groups shared a simplistic conce tion of “Nature”. Determinists practice B a crude materialism from which the Possibilists made only a partial and essential1 idealist escape. “Man” could choose Yrom among the “possibilities” presented by the physical environment, but it was “Man” in the abstract, and the conception of societal constraints on his actions was woefully inadequate. True, there were many rich studies of pre-capitalist rural societies. However, the preoccupation with when dealing with a use values, fruitful was insufficient for “natural economy”, societies where goods are produced for sale and rofitability is the intervening (exchange value r; criterion of what is produced, or not as for instance in an economic produced, crisis (HARRISON, 1978). Ideologies have the conservative effect of hampering the reco nition of new problems (ANDERSON, 1973 f . Environmentalism was particularly outdated, stuck in the era of where economic crises ‘natural economy” arose mainly from “natural disasters” rather than structural features of society. It recognised that “Man” changed the physical environment but failed to appreciate the
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historical processes of change in “Man’s” own social nature which this involved. In a capitalist context it did not appreciate the transformation of nature into physical commodities, nor recognise fixed capital in the landscape as capital. Its limited conce tion of “Nature” was not easily extendab Pe to modern society. This helps explain both the relative neglect of Urban Geo aphy (long after the majority of the Britis a population was urbanised), and the subsequent distortions of its development, first in an environmentalist direction (TAYLOR , 1949), and later in spatial determinism and the abstract world of Spatial Analysis. Rather than find a viable replacement for a conception that had failed, mainstream Geogra hy dro ped its explicit concern with t Ke onto 7ogy of “Nature”. Just how impoverished it remained can be seen from the erspective of Historical Materialism. In its E;ialectical conception, Man (and Woman) is part of “Nature” but is capable of consciously transforming it through productive labour. In this historical process of transforming external “Nature” and increasing his control over it, Man transformed his own human nature and social organisation. “The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life, and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure . . . the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged.” (ENGELS, 1880).
Nature, human and non-human, is not fixed but interacts continuously. The unity of “Man” and “Nature” is thus mediated by human consciousness and social class structure. It changes through history and over geogra hit space (BURGESS, 1978). In classdivide B societies, “Man” is alienated from “Nature” and his own human nature. In capitalism, for instance, “Nature” is transformed for profit, not directly accordin to human needs; the products are alienated fgrom their immediate producers who, in most cases, do not control their own labour processes (BRAVERMAN, 1974); workers, white-collar as well as blue-collar, are treated as a com-
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modity, labour-power, bought in the “labour market” - or mcreasingly consigned to unemployment, as in the present world crisis of profitability which ‘ dictates” a massive underutilization of existing capital and human resources despite an increase m human needs. We have moved a long way from the mechanical materialism of the Environmental Determinists, and from abstract “Man”choosing presented by the from the “possibilities” natural environment. Marx developed his “materialist conception of through a materialist critique of history” Hegel’s idealist view of history and by fusing materialist and idealist strands in previous philosophies. It can be summed up by two quotations: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (MARX and ENGELS, 1848).
brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogma also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form”. (ENGELS, 1890).
The essence of Historical Materialism clearly expressed by PLEKHANOV, ‘father of Russian marxism’:
“Social relationships have their inherent logic . . . But if I know in what direction social relations are changing . . . I am able to influence it . . . Hence, in a certain sense, I can make history, and there is no need for me to wait while ‘it is being made’ . . . change never takes place ‘by itself’; it always needs the intervention of men . . . men who do more than others . . . are called great men. But great is a relative concept. In the ethical sense every man is great who, to use the Biblical phrase, ‘lays down his life for his friend’.” (PLEKHANOV, 1940).
materialism, therefore, does not pretend to be “predictive”. It is not a determinism. It tries to analyse the possibilities latent in past and present social processes their “inherent logic”; but the future always rests finally with the future “makers of history” and the unpredictable outcomes of stru les between them. As already mentionowever, it is not unproblematical: there ed, ‘fig are, for instance, problems if the “base-superstructure” metaphor is interpreted too literally; the relationships between “the logic of capital accumulation ’ and other historical and political factors, are the subject of serious disagreements and debates between Marxists; friend and foe alike have often seriously misrepresented Marx’s ideas and disagreed over their interpretation. For example, GE o R G reviewing N. LUKACS BUKHARIN’S Historical Materialism criticised his Natural Science bias which led him to the false conclusion that, in principle, prediction is as possible in Social as in Natural Science, and towards Technological determinism - “a somewhat refined version of the ‘environmental’ theories of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” (which, we can add, lived on in Geo a hy up to the midCentury v . uch disagreements Twentieth can be fruitful, but in some cases, in Geography as elsewhere, the misrepresentation of Marxism is motivated by a political hostility which MARX’s
and “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past” (MARX, 1859).
mechanical materialisms In contrast to (environmentalism or its modern equivalents, technological and spatial determimsm, or a fixed “human nature” account of social proHistorical Materialism recognises cesses), ideas - human and class consciousness - as central to the historical process, but ideas placed in their historical context. MARX himself wrote: “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating.” (MARX, 1845).
And ENG E LS replied “economic determinism”
to the charge by saying:
of
“The economic situation is the basis but the various elements of the superstructure - political forms of the class struggle and its results . . . even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the
was the
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makes (LUKACS,
sensible 1975).
discussion
difficult
[2]
That said, Geogra hy has much to learn from these ideas and de 1 ates, not least on questions of method and the relationships between Place and Space.
Historical
Materialism
and Geographic
Space
The “Regional Differentiation” school emphasised the uniqueness of “Place” and failed to relate “the particular” to “the general” because it also lacked a coherent social theory a lack sometimes proclaimed as a virtue! An influential paper by SAUER (1925), for example, advocated “the re ression of a riori theories” when analysing t Ke content o P landscape. Such empiricist attitudes resulted in an “imaginery concreteness”, even, or perhaps especially, in the study of particular places or re ions. The surface appearance of landscape, “t 1 e facts” of “Place ‘, were often inadequately related to underlying social processes within and beyond the “Place” being studied. Despite subsequent developments in Spatial concreteness” of Analysis, the “imaginary empiricism is still a widespread characteristic of Geography. At issue is the appropriate method of analysis and abstraction. MARX’S (18574) discussion of an inap ropriate method in Political Economy w11P have a familiar ring to geographers: . . . it seems correct to start with the real and concrete elethe division of ments . . with its population, the population into classes, town and country, the coast, the different branches of production, export and import . etc. . . . However, on closer examination, this proves false. Population is an abstraction if, for instance, one disregards the classes of which it is composed . . classes remain empty terms if one does not know the factors on which they depend, e.g., wage-labour capital, and so on. These presuppose exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. . Thus, if one were to take population as the point of departure, it would be a chaotic conception of a complex whole . .” [ 31 “When examining a given country
The resemblance with Regional Geography is strikin (except that it often started with natura B environment and did not progress as
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far as “classes”!). MARX described it as the method of the early economists of the Seventeenth Century [4] . He went on to show how economic theory was developed by moving analytically from the “imaginary concrete” starting point of population “towards ever more simple concepts . . . ever thinner abstrations until one discovered a few decisive abstract, general relations such as . . . labour, division of labour, need, value, etc. . . .” and he pays tribute to the “immense step forward” by ADAM SMITH when he cut through all the particular forms of wealthcreating activity to discover the abstract, universal concept of Zabour, and the universality of the roducts of labour as embodying past objecti Pred (or materialised) labour [S] . Using these abstract analytical concepts, “the journey has to be retraced in the opposite direction until one arrives at the population again, which is this time not a chaotic conception of the whole, but a rich totality of many determinations and relations . The latter is obviously the scientifically correct method. The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration (or synthesis) of many determinations . .” [ 31 .
Mainstream ground to “journey” directions at
Geography has still considerable make up in completing this indeed it is still travelling in both once!
There was an advance in the use of abstraction in Spatial Analysis from the 1950’s, but it was applied one-sidedly only to “spatial” concepts. NYSTUEN (1963) identified three: distance, direction, and connection (or relative position). Arguing that other concepts or “accessibility” such as “neighbourhood” of them, he conare sim ly “compounds” sidered ! is three basic concepts “sufficient to employ the geo a hical point of view . . . in all branches o FrKt e discipline _ . . physiography, cultural . . economic . . (etc.)“. to integrate Physical and Thus appeared Human Geo aphy as a unified “spatial science”, wit a out the need for a theory of nature or society. However, this is an idealist use - or rather misuse - of abstraction; it abstracts some of the “bathwater” and loses most of the “baby”. Concepts applicable equally to physical or social processes are so abstract that on their own they have no necessary connection with either. They cannot be applied to particular processes, or
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built up into useful “compounds”., without additional concepts which relate employin specifical Py to those processes. But if three spatial concepts were “sufficient”, these additional concepts could be left unexamined, and in Spatial Analysis they generally were. conce ts of Spatial The highly abstract Analysis were based on forma P eometry, and their “content” was often supp f ied by adding concepts from other disciplines whose bases, certainly in the case of Social Sciences, were also idealist in many instances 161. The basic geometry emphasised on1 a “relative” conan J’ could not satisception of ‘ Space”, factorily encompass an “absolute” conception of the specifictty of “Place” 171. Indeed, Spatial Analysis developed by counterposing the two conceptions rather than inte~atin them. BUNGE (1966), an imaginative an % forthright pioneer, rejected as “unscientific” Geography s concern with the uniqueness of were to be sought “Place’ . Generalisations but in an abstract geometry of reIative spaces. He dispensed with the problem of the relationship between the “general” and the that Regional Geo“unique” b insistin graphy shou i/d deal on By with “generic” rather than “uni ue facts”. However, the theories which de 2me and classify certain facts as were not examined; and the “ eneric” a %solute location of events in time and space was not recognised as one of their defining characteristics. Geography was the loser. The earlier emphasis on the ontological rimacy of natural environment was replaced primacy of Natural Fzy the epistemological Science (GREGORY, 1978),or, perhaps more accurately, b the primacy of “philosphers of science” su x as POPPER who based their e istemological procedures on ?n essentially a Ristorical conceptron of Physics (how do physicists “refute ’ their theories of the origin of the universe, by re eated “experiments”? of what was, presuma \ ly, a unique event?). onto10 ical issues The were ignored (HARVEY, 15 69) [S} and environmentalism was replaced by spatial determinism. Instead of being unified b a positivist methodolo~ supposedly applica Elle to all science irres ective of content, Geography experience C-funprecedented fragmentation. Sub-disciplines mushroomed as a wide range of other disciplines were ransacked to put flesh on the dry bones of geometrical concepts. It was
175
“fun being a Geographer”, you could keep to go in all sorts of “your options open different directions! This was often benifical, as in the increased contact with various parts of Social Science, but it did not rovide a coherent theory of society. Socia P Science also suffers from fragmentation into separate disciplines and subduciplines: from arbitrary admmistrative divisions typically based on idealist forms of abstraction [9] . In addition, the oscillation between crude materialism and subjective idealism, between an over-emphasis on either material conditions or people’s subjective thou hts, took on renewed force. The mechanica P materialism of early Spatial Analysis, despite its idealist basis in Neoclassical Economics [6] , brought an idealist reaction, first from “behavioural” studies of individual perceptions, and later from a stratosphere of subject“phenomenological” ivity. The separation of such corn eting “schools” into subdisciplines obscure Cf their inherent contradictions [lo] , as the inadequacies of Geography were reinforced by its administrative unity as a separate discipline. The fragmentation, and the incompatibility of many of the fragments, was increasingly seen as a problem by geographers, but, not sur risingly, attempts to find a synthesis from wit K in the discipline failed. HAGERSTRAND, one of the most creative thinkers in Spatial Analysis, noted in 197 3: “our geography is too incomplete to be able to catch the conditions which circumscribe man’s actions” [ 111 , But his answer, to add a very abstract concept of “power” and “conflict” to his “time-space geography”, ulled him back into the abstract world o P Spatial Analysis case, the materialist (and, in his particular world of Neurath’s “physicalist” sociology which tried to systematically exclude subjectivity), hoping to find the solution in a “corn~~u~~s~, of geometry and accounting proGeographers searchmg smgle-mmdedly for’ the “spatial” factor (or even the “temporal-spatial” factor) have, paradoxically, missed much that is socially significant in geographic space. Historical Materialism provides a framework for resolving the false polarities of Geogra hy; and it is a fruitful stimulus to geo ap Kical research which is systematically reffated to other areas of social inqu’ , and which real&es that “social”, as we7l as “spatial” concepts are problematic~ and have to be
176
criti+ly
examined [ 12 J . Its “nondisciplimtegratmg power has its ontological nary basis in the central dynamic of society; in capitalist society: the compulsion on capital to accumulate more capital, or risk going under to competing caprtals; the attendant, though contradictory, need to reproduce the labour- ower that reduces the surplus (e.g., throu K wages, an x state-provided services); and t l! e need to reproduce capitalist relations of production (e.g., defend property rights; prevent the direct producers appropriating their “own” surplus, and le itimate the statusquo by ideological and oIf-itical means, and, in the last resort, physica P force). This ontology enables us to relate “Space” and “Place” dialectically, seeing the “general” manifested in the ” articular”, and vice versa. This can on1 be dpone by using a theory of society whit X is constructed usin concepts that have been derived in a materia Pist way, in accordance with material reality. It involves moving from the highly abstract level of the “mode of production”, through lower levels of abstraction, to the more concrete level of particular “social formations” which are place and time specific (e.g., Britain, or one of its regions, in the 1970’s) [13]. “Social formations” are the main focus of Geography, but they cannot be properly analysed without using higher level abstractions includin “mode of production”. The problem wit I! Spatial Analysis theories was that they generally remained stuck at or above a level appropriate to analysing “modes of production” without being aware of the fact! But even when aware of it, it is not yet clear just how far a materialist analysis of geo raphic space can usefully roceed at such an a% stract level. Some of t Ke contemporuy debates between different variants of hiarxism, on questions of method and the substantive interpretation of historical and contemporary reality 1141, have a direct bearing on theoretical issues that arise in Geography. The “materialist conception of history” i.neludes a conception of Geographir. Social forces do not exist independently of time and s ace; their location in time--space is one of t Keir inherent material aspects. This is often lost sight of in modes of analysis which are idealist, or which remain at a high level of abstraction, as in much Social Science. But it was not lost sight of by MARX and other
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Marxists [ 151 . Social phenomena such as “the division of labour” or “the balance of class forces” vary from lace to place as well as through time, and tK us the “logic of capital accumulation” expresses itself very unevenly over space. Indeed, the “balance of forces” at particular places can be decisive at particular points in the history of an entire “social formation”, if unique events come to be enerulised over space (e.g. those in St. Peters%urg and Moscow in 19 17, which s read across the Russian Empire, and beyon B). In the last (and most concrete) analysis, social recesses cannot be abstracted from their Flistorical and geographical setting. Misquoting, but not I think we might add that
misinterpreting,
MARX,
“men make their awn geography . . . but in geographical circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past”.
What is needed if Geography is to overcome its fr~mentation and begin to realise its potential, is not just a Geogra hy “without adjectives” (ANUCHIN, 197 B) but geographical studies without the blinkers of a big “G”.
Notes 1.
It develops some themes outlined in two earlier Notes on Geography and Historical papers! Materialism, Social Geography and the City Seminar Series, SSRC, March 1979t and Historical Materialism and Explanation in Urban Geography delivered at the Joint Meeting of Urban and Social IBG Study Groups, London, September, 1979.
2.
LUKACS G. (1975) Tactics and Ethics: Political Essays 1919-29, Harper and Row, London, pp. 134-142. In contrast to the basic disagreements between two Marxists, such as LUKACS and BUKHARIN, some recent misrepresentations of Marxism by geographers are little more than “smear campaigns” which attempt to assign “guilt by association”. For instance, to MUIR who “saw the true face of Marxism” in Russia’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, and WAGSTAFF for whom it “not only closes the mind” but feads to “the psychiatric ward, the labour camp and the gas chamber” one can only reply, capitalism has led in that direction, Hitler was a fervent antiand many people, including many Marxist, “dissidents” in labour camps and psychiatric
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wards, do not accept Russia’s self-image as “socialist” just because it official state ideology of “Marxism” says so. As I mentioned in a debate with Richard Muir, just because Al Capone claimed his operations were strictly capitalist and “all American” is not sufficient grounds for rejecting America or capitalism. This is not the place to discuss it, but I would argue that Russia, for quite specific historical reasons was transformed into a particularly nasty state-capitalist dictatorship, but the majority of the world’s dictatorships remain good old-fashioned capitalist. MUIR R. (1979) Radical geography and Marxism Area 11, 126-1274
WAGSTAFF J.M. (1979) Dialectical materialism, geography, and catastrophe theory Area, 11, 326-332.
3.
4.
5.
6.
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MARX K. Gnrndrisse (1857-8) The Method of Political Economy. Paraphrased for brevity from: the Pelican Edition (1973), pp. 100-108, and The German ideology (Supplements Texts), Ed. C.J. ARTHUR, LAWRENCE & WISHART London (1974) pp. 140-148. See also{ FINE B. and HARRIS L. (1979) Rereading Capital, Macmillan, London, pp. 6-15: Marx’s method was to construct increasingly complex and more concrete concepts from his “few decisive abstract general relations” until the complexity of material reality was reproduced in thought. “The important point is that this process is neither purely idealist, existing in thought independent of reality, nor arbitrary . . . the concepts produced and their logical order are in accordance with material reality” (p. 7) - in contrast to a system of abstractions based on idealist concepts (e.g., Neo-ciassical Economics’ subjective theory of value) and the formal procedure of combining properties common to a whole variety of different processes (e.g., their spatial form) or building abstractions out of analogies (e.g., General Systems Theory). They started with “the population, the nation, the state, several states, etc.” In 1949, G. TAYLOR op, tit, p. 3 started with environment, race, nation, and city! “How difficult and immense a transition this was is demonstrated by the fact that Adam Smith himself occasionally &apses back into the Physiocratic system”. E.g., Neoclassical Economics (see note 3, above) and its extension in Location Theory; seea MASSEY D. (1973) Towards a Critique of Industrial Location Theory Antipode 5 (3), 3 3-39.
7.
Which may explain why NYSTUEN added a fourth concept, boundary, almost an an afterthought, without relating it to his ‘Lbasic” concepts.
8.
HARVEY D. (1969) ExpJanation in Geography, Edward Arnold, London. p. 9: “. . . the interpretation to be given to experience is itself ignored”.
9.
See note 6, above. Increased reliance on idealist Social Sciences also helped move Geography even further away from a coherent conception of “Nature”, Disciplinary and sub-disciplinary divisions have the effect of “deskilling” social scientists in ways analogous to those described by BRAVEST op. tit, 1974, for productionline and routine white-collar workers, who through the fragmentation of production processes have lost overall knowledge and control of them.
10. E.g., the idealism of “cultural geography” such as M. HESLINGA’s The Z&b Border as a CuJturaJ Divide, Assen, 1962, which overemphasises “spiritual” at the expense of ‘economic’ factors and fails to relate them; it has it crudely materialist counterpart in an “economic geography” which can discuss regional industrial policy in Northern Ireland without reference to religious dist~bu~ons, associated features of the labour market, and attendent political factors; (e.g., STEED G. and THOMAS M. (1971) Regional Industrial Change: Northern Ireland Ann. Ass. Am. Geogr., 61, 344-360).
T. The Domain of Human 11. HAGERSTRAND Geography in ~rectjons in Geo~upby, Ed. R.J. CHORLEY (1973) Methuen, London, pp. 6787. See alsol ANDERSON J. (1971) Space-time Budgets and Activity Studies in Urban Geography and Planning, Environment and Planning, 3, 353-368 - which exhibits somewhat similar limitations and others besides. 12. E.g., MASSEY D. and CATALAN0
A. (1978)
Capital and Land: Landownership by Capital in Great Britain, Edward Arnold, London.
13. See FINE and HARRIS op. tit (note 3), for a clear exposition of levels of abstraction, and their application in analysing modern capitalism. 14. E.g., THOMPSON’s polemic against the “theoreticism” of Althusser’s “structuralist Marxism” which involves the relationships between social “structures”, conscious human beings and historical change (with THOMPSON open to, but not I think fully guilty of, the counter-
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charge of “empiricism”): THOMPSON E.P., (1978) The Poverty of Theory, Merlin, London, 193-406; on the role of the towns in the rise of capitalism: Tbe Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism Ed. HILTON R. (1978) Verso, 1978; on conceptions of the contemporary western state - important in relation to “policy issues” see, e.g., State and Capital: A Marxist Debate Eds. JOLLOWAY J. and PICCIOTTO S. (1978) Edward Arnold, London. the capitalist 15. Marx’s Capital, though analysing “mode of production”, contains interesting material on the geographic space of the “social formation” of early industrial Britain - summarised in HOLLAND S. (1976) Capital versus the Region, pp. 36-47, Macmillan, London; and used in ANDERSON J. (1977) “Engels’ Manchester: Industrialization, Workers’ Housing and A Political Economy of Urban Ideologies”, Cities and Regions 1, Architectural Association Planning School, partly to highlight the inMarxism” in conadequacies of “structuralist temporary Urban Sociology. Two other examples of “geography in Marxism” are: TROTSKY L. (1977) The History of the Russian Revolution (1930), Pluto, London, Chapter 1 The Peculiarities of Russia’s Development, with its theory of “uneven and combined development”; and PLEKHANOV G.V. Fundamental Problems of Marxism (1908), Lawrence and Wishart, London, pp. 38-46, which draws on RATZEL to emphasise the variable importance of natural environment in conditioning, through the medium of the social relations of production, the development of the forces of production. Much work remains to be done in excavating and critically evaluating the geographical content of such marxist classics by these and other writers such as LENIN and GRAMSCI.
References ANDERSON
(1973) Ideology in Geography, 3, p. 5. ANUCHIN V.A. (1973) Theory of Geography in CHORLEY 1973 op. tit, p. 62. BRAVERMAN H. (1974) Labour and Monopoly Capital, Monthly Review Press. Antipode,
J.
5 No.
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BUNGE W. (1966) Theoretical Geography, Studies in Geography, pp. 8-13.
Lund
BURGESS R. (1978) The Concept of Nature in Geography and Marxism, Antipode, 10, No. 2. Also: SMITH N. (1978) Geography, Marx and the Concept of Nature Ms., Geography Department, Johns Hopkins University; and SAYER A. (1979) Epistemology and Conceptions of People and Nature in Geography, Ms. Sussex University. CHORLEY graphy,
R.J. (Ed.) (1973) London, Methuen.
Directions
in
Geo-
ENGLES F. (1880) Socialism: Utopian and Scientific in Marx and Engels: Selected Works (1968) Lawrence and Wishart, London, p. 411. ENGELS F. (1890) Letter to J. Bloch, p. 682 in Marx and Engels. Selected Works. GREGORY D. (1978) ideology, Science and Human Geography, Hutchinson, London. HARRISON J. (1978) Marxist Economics for Socialists: A critique of reformism, Pluto, London, pp. 20, 31. IIAGERSTRAND T. The graphy. In: CHORLEY
domain of human gco1973 op. cit. pp. 67-87.
MARX K. (1859) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, p. 96 in Marx and Engels op. cit. MARX K. (1845) Theses on Feuerback (1845), p. 28 in Marx and Engels, op. cit. MARX K. and ENGELS F. (1848) The Communist Manifesto, p. 35 in Marx and Engels: Selected Works.
NYSTUEN J.D. (1963) Identification of Some Fundamental Spatial Concepts in Spatial Analysis Eds. BERRY B.J.L. and MARBLE D.F. (1968), Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, pp. 35-41. PLEKHANOV G.V. (1940) The Role of the fndividual in History, Lawrence and Wishart, London, pp. 57, 58. SAUER C. (1925) The Morphology of Landscape, University of California Publications in Geography, Vol. 2, 2. IAYLOR G. (1949) Urban Geography, Methuen, London. (A particularly ludicrous, though influential, example of ‘environmentalism’ in Urban Geograuhy.)