The Dictionary of Human Geography (202 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

BOOK: The Dictionary of Human Geography
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The term ?text? is used in human geog raphy in both its literal sense and also in a metaphorical sense, but the boundaries bet ween the two usages are far from clear cut. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Like all academic disciplines, human geography involves the interpretation of texts, understood as a corpus of written or printed material: first order texts such as census re cords, diaries and transcriptions (convention ally called ?sources? but this is misleading, since they are complex transcriptions and cod ings, whose origins lie elsewhere, and they are as often as not sedimentations of multiple, sometimes contradictory layers of meanings); and second order texts (articles, monographs, dictionaries) that offer competing interpret ations of those interpretations. This may seem commonplace, but it is not: ?reading? and ?writ ing? are not often included in discussions of methodoLogy, yet they are central to the prac tice of geographical enquiry. They also have their own geographies, and Livingstone (2005a) has argued for an historical geography of textual circulation and interpretation. Influenced by actor networK theory, he de scribes written texts as ?immutable mobiles?, which means that ?knowledge does not move around the world as an immaterial entity?. Livingstone argues that the production and re ception of texts are practices that take place in material spaces, and that geographers should attend to the geographical conditions of the en gagement between texts and readers that trans form interpretations and exclude as well as include audiences. In another sense, of course, this makes texts highly mutable mobiles: they are constantly subject to new interpretations and produce new effects (Ogborn, 2007). (NEW PARAGRAPH) These ideas have been extended still further to treat all productions of materiaL cuLture as texts, including maps and Landscapes. This work has been influenced by post structuraLism and sees cultural productions as unstable practices of meaning making. At tention is focused on a multiplicity of compet ing meanings: hence ambiguity, volatility and a politics of interpretation. The core argument is that the principal characteristics of written discourse also describe social life: meaning in written texts is concretized through inscrip tion, so social practices are concretized in the material landscape; as authors? intentions and the reception of texts often fail to coin cide, so social practices become detached from the consciousness of agents whose collective actions constitute such practices; written texts are reinterpreted under changing circumstan ces just as social events are continually reinter preted; and as the meaning of written texts is unstable and dependent on interpretations of readers, so social action and institutions are open to a multiplicity of interpretations. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Post structuralism has had a considerable influence on the reading of maps as texts (Harley, 1989; see cartography, history of), but readings of landscape as text have a more complex genealogy (Duncan and Duncan, 1988). Although cultural geograph ers have long regarded landscapes as palimp sests of culture nature interactions to be read by specialists, notably themselves, many of those who have adopted the metaphor of landscape as text have eschewed the role of the ?expert decoder? in favour of an ostensibly reciprocal approach to landscape interpret ation that moves in a hermeneutic circle. A key influence here has been the recovery of multiple layers of meaning through the thicK description of American anthropologist Clif ford Geertz (1926 2006) rather than their de stabilization through the deconstruction of Derrida. Geertz?s hermeneutic ethnographic approach to culture as text has guided the recovery of multiple readings proffered not by experts on the history of a generic land scape type but, instead, constructed by people who inhabit a particular landscape and who mobilize different readings as part of a politics that is central to its lively production and transformation (Duncan, 1990). And yet the recovery, reproduction and transmission of those constructions and contestations for a wider public audience is hardly the work of non experts: not only do ?first order? and ?second order? texts bleed into one another, but the composite textualizations provided by Geertz may be read as the articulations of ?an invisible voice of authority who declares what the you transformed to a they experience? (Crapanzo, 1986, p. 74; see also Gregory, 1994, pp. 147 8). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Many geographers have questioned the use fulness of the text metaphor altogether, argu ing that it leads to an over emphasis on communication, intentionality and the discur sive rather than the material or unintended (cf. non representationaL theory). Defend ers of the metaphor respond by arguing that cultural productions with text like qualities (such as landscapes) are heterogeneous, ma terial realities that are mutually constitutive with reading practices and interact with other non human processes. It is also argued that landscapes are normally read inattentatively or subconsciously, so that the norms and val ues that shape the landscape become natural ized and unconsciously absorbed. There are further differences of opinion on the degree of fluidity or stability of cultural practices and productions, and on the extent to which (NEW PARAGRAPH) interpretations are constrained by discourses. However, an expansive definition of text need not assume in advance of empirical investigation any particular degree of stability, instability or constraint. Fluidity versus stability is a matter of emphasis, not an either/or question. jsd/Dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Barnes and Duncan (1991); Duncan (1990); Ogborn (2007). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
textuality
In many versions of post struc turalism, ?textuality? refers to the expansion of the term ?text? to include cultural practices and material productions such as architectural forms and landscapes that may be read for meaning, connotation and contestation (cf. Barnes and Duncan, 1991; Duncan and Duncan, 1998). Such meanings are regarded as inherently unstable and incessantly recontextualized so that defined in this way textuality is indecidability. To investigate the textuality of the world is to investigate the performativity of discourse: the ways in which meanings and objects are produced, contested, negotiated and reiterated. To view the world textually is also to see cultural pro ductions as becoming detached from their authors and reinterpreted and recontextua lized by interpreters as their relations to those productions change in often complex and un expected ways. A textual approach thus brings into play indeterminancy, and involves both the denial of an unmediated access to the world and a critical questioning of notions of authenticity and essentialism. It focuses at tention on the relations between texts and be tween their multiple contexts of production, reception and reinterpretation: on the play of intertextuality through which texts draw on other texts which in turn draw on other texts . . . (NEW PARAGRAPH) Textuality is sometimes seen to be com promised by the danger of textualism. This concern has two proximate sources. First, Said?s critique of orientalism has been immensely influential in human geography, not least in expanding and ?worlding? texts, and asking what these cultural productions these ?doings? do in the world. Said uses the term ?textuality? in an opposite way to that described above, however, to disparage an over emphasis on the mechanics of the text at the expense of the mechanics of the material world outside the text (cf. Smith and Katz, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Second, Derrida?s famous remark that ?there is nothing outside the text? has (NEW PARAGRAPH) often been used to accuse him of precisely this sort of textualism. To the contrary, however, Derrida?s point was that there can be no pre discursive, non contextual and non intertextual understanding of the world: context is vital to his method of reading texts (see deconstruction). Worries about textual ism are real enough, and serious questions have been raised in human geography about the limits of the text metaphor and the privil eges that it smuggles in to critical enquiry through its focus on cognition, meaning and interpretation (see non representational theory). jsd (NEW PARAGRAPH)
theory
The term?theory?is used in various senses in the humanities and social sciences. At its broadest, theory can be understood as any set of statements and propositions used in explanation or interpretation. From the per spective of various versions of positivism, the ory is subordinated to the tribunal of empirical validation theories generate hypotheses that are tested against evidence, with the aim of generating general laws. In this tradition, the value of a theory lies in its predictive ability and explanatory power. In geography, this notion of theory was associated with the quantitative revolution, and was distin guished by the attempt to develop uniquely geographical theories as the hallmark of a distinct ively spatial science. The development of various post positivist approaches has led to a shift in the meaning of theory in the discipline. These approaches all share the view that there can be no theory neutral observation, and that the validation of any theoretical proposition is underdetermined by empirical evidence. Rather, theories are viewed as at least partly constitutive of the objects of empirical study (cf. discourse). This leads towards forms of grounded theory, wherein empirical observation, concrete analysis and abstraction are combined in ongoing dialogue with one another (Sayer, 1992 [1984]). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Since the 1980s, there has been a veritable explosion of theory in human geography. Graff (1992, p. 53) argues that theory breaks out in disciplines when ?what was once silently agreed to in a community becomes disputed, forcing its members to formulate and defend assumptions that they previously did not even have to be aware of?. This idea of theory ?breaking out? is particularly pertinent to the increasing presence of cultural theory in human geography (see cultural turn). This is both a mark of heightened division within the discipline around methods and objects of research, but also of an opening out to other disciplines. The interdisciplinary or even post disciplinary nature of the theory circulating through human geography has become incr easingly evident in the past two decades: if in the 1980s the agenda of Marxist inflected human geography focused on the spatialization of social theory, since the 1990s the heigh tened geographicaL imagination of other dis ciplines has generated original contributions to the theorization of traditional topics such as Landscape, place, space and scale (Gregory, (NEW PARAGRAPH) 1994). (NEW PARAGRAPH) This pluralization of the sources of theory has also been associated with increasing attention to the politics of theory. From within geography, the growth of post positivist ap proaches was closely associated with Harvey?s (NEW PARAGRAPH) distinction between revolutionary, counter revolutionary and status quo theories. Geographers have also used Habermas? (1987a) analysis of the different forms of human interest sustained by distinct types of theoretical knowledge, with its explicit argu ment that ?critical theory? best serves the causes of human emancipation (see criticaL theory). Human geographers? treatment of the relationship between theory and politics has, however, developed beyond this idea that some theories harbour inherent political virtues in themselves, towards a more refLEX ive focus upon the forms of authority embed ded in the practices of ?doing? theory. Three related issues have attracted attention: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographers have been sensitive to the phenomenon of traveLLing theory. A great deal of theory now circulating in geography has been ?imported? from other disciplines, and this in turn allows geographers to talk across sub disciplin ary divisions and out to other scholars. But this raises contentions questions about expertise, competence and the ex ternal validation of positions staked in ternally within the discipline. Theory also has a real geography of its own. For example, most theory in the humanities and social sciences is actually produced and published in the USA, and more broadly in ?the West? (Barnett and Low, 1996). Other parts of the world are often not accorded value as sources of theoret ical insight, being relegated to the status of sites for empirical investigation. This raises the challenge of ?learning from other regions?, where this refers to the acknowledgement of versions of theoret ical work belonging to traditions beyond the confines of Western Europe and North America (Slater, 1992: see also ethnocentrism; eurocentrism; situ ated KnowLedge). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Building on this first issue, there is a set of concerns about the types of interper sonal authority embedded in the preva lent modes of theoretical commentary in human geography. Theory, and not least cultural theory, is associated with forms of mastery that construct patterns of clos ure, emulation and influence that belie overt claims to political radicalism (cf. mas culinism). femiNist writers have been particularly creative in developing new styles of theoretical writing that challenge these prevalent forms of academic reason ing (Katz, 1996: see also minor theory). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In its self consciously ?critical? forms in particular, theory is often understood as a tool for exposing the contingent, con structed qualities of phenomena, as an instrument for debunking ideoLogies, mythologies and misrepresentations. In turn, theory is often assumed to be an essential aspect of any practical politics of radical social transformation. This is indicative of a deeply rooted ?scholastic disposition?, whereby it is assumed that the detached insights accorded to scep tical academics provide a privileged entry point for changing the motivations of ordinary people and the mechanics of worldly processes (Bourdieu, 2000). In response to this sort of scholastic atti tude, Thrift (1999a, p. 304) recommends what he calls modest theory, understood as a ?practical means of going on rather than something concerned with enabling us to see, contemplatively, the sup posedly true nature of what something is?. non representationaL theory is meant to exemplify this notion of modest theoretical practice. However, its charac teristic modes of presentation reiterate many of the rhetorical devices of distinc tion and exclusion associated with con ventional forms of grand theory. (NEW PARAGRAPH) geography remains a discipline deeply sus picious of theory, heavily invested as it is in notions such as ?the field?, ?empirical work?, ?politics? and ?practice?. These notions are often invoked to sustain their own forms of authority, closure and exclusion. Debates about relevance in the discipline often take the form of arguments that there is too much theory (NEW PARAGRAPH) in geography, or too much of the wrong sort of theory. When faced with such arguments, it is always best to remember a simple dictum: ?Hos tility to theory usually means opposition to other people?s theories and an oblivion to one?s own? (Eagleton 1983, p. viii). cb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bourdieu (2000, chs 1 and 2); Gallop (2002); Garber (2001); Hammersley (1995). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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