The Dictionary of Human Geography (35 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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critical human geography
Theoretically informed geographical scholarship, commit ted to Leftist politics, sociaL justice and lib eration through scholarly enquiry. Critical geography is one variant of the rich tradition of critical enquiry in social science and the humanities that embraces Marx?s call not only to interpret the world, but to change it. Fay defines contemporary critical science as the ?attempt to understand in a rationally respon sible manner the oppressive features of a soci ety such that this understanding stimulates its audience to transform their society and thereby liberate themselves? (1987, p. 4). Agger (1998) identifies several features ofcritical social theory, as practiced in fields such as geography. These include: a rejection of positivist enquiry (see positivism); an endorsement of the possi bility of progress; a model of society character ized by structural domination produced, in part, through myth and ideoLogy; and a rejec tion of revolutionary expediency with a con comitant faith in the agency of everyday change and self transformation. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Critical human geography emerged from a long tradition of dissent. Although its predeces sors include the anarchist geography of scholars such as Reclus and Kroptkin (see anarchism), Anglo American critical geography?s roots are to be found in the radical geography that emerged in the 1970s (see Peet, 2000). A self identified field of critical geography began to emerge in the late 1980s. Important departures included a rejection of some of the structural excesses ofmarxism (in line with a general post modern turn), and a sharpening interest in ques tions of culture and representation, as opposed to the economic focus of radical geog raphy. Radical and critical geography, while closely related, are not interchangeable. Some observers (Castree, 2000) worry at the eclipse of the former by the latter. (NEW PARAGRAPH) One important consequence of the post modern turn has been that critical geography is remarkably varied in its commitments. For Hubbard, Kitchin, Bartley and Fuller (NEW PARAGRAPH) , critical geography is diverse in its epistemoLogy, ontoLogy and methodo logy, and lacks a ?distinctive theoretical identity? (p. 62). That said, certain common themes can be discerned (Blomley, 2006). These include: (NEW PARAGRAPH) A commitment to sociaL theory and a rejection of empiricism: critical geog raphers draw from a number of theoret ical wells, including poLiticaL economy, queer theory, post coLoniaLism and feminism. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Self consciously oppositional enquiry: scholarship that seeks to unmask power, demonstrate inequaLity, uncover resist ance and foster emancipatory politics and social change. (NEW PARAGRAPH) An emphasis on representation as a site for domination and resistance: given a general interest in discourse and mean ing, one common focus is the ways in which representations of space serve to sustain power (or conversely, can be used to challenge power). (NEW PARAGRAPH) An optimistic faith in the power of critical scholarship: critical geography can both undo oppressive forms of social power, and provide transformative insights. In speaking truth to power, in other words, the scholar can undo domination, and free the oppressed: ?Dissentient thoughts and norm challenging information can, as history shows, be as potent as armies given the right conditions?, Castree and Wright (2005, p. 2) argue. (NEW PARAGRAPH) A commitment to progressive praxis: critical geographers claim common cause with movements committed to sociaL justice. The precise nature of the rela tion, and the appropriate focus for, and locus of, activism has been much debated (Fuller and Kitchin, 2004b). (NEW PARAGRAPH) space as a critical tool: a particular atten tion to the ways in which spatial arrange ments and representations can serve to produce inequality and oppression and opposition. To varying degrees, critical geographers note the ways in which space can serve as both a tool and veil of power. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Some important and unresolved questions remain. For example, relatively limited discus sion has occurred over the shared commit ments, if any, of critical geographers (though cf. Harvey, 2000b). What are geographers crit ical of? Why? And to what end? To borrow from Barnes (2002), critical geographers are better at the ?explanatory diagnostic? than the ?anticipatory utopian?. Critical geography, for Barnes, needs ?an imaginative capacity to reconfigure the world and our place within it? (p. 12). This should not entail enforced polit ical conformity, of course. However, too often, the politics that informs critical geography remains implicit and inchoate. More generally, what are the assumptions implicit to critical scholarship? Agger (1998), in a supportive critique of critical social science, raises con cerns that it posits a view of human capacity that is predicated on ?an inflated conception of the powers of human reason and will? (p. 9). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Another important question concerns the institutionalization of critical geography. While critical geographers like to think of themselves as rebels and outsiders (and were certainly trea ted as such by the disciplinary establishment fifteen years ago), critical enquiry has become pervasive in geography (Byles, 2001). Critical geography, Castree (2000, p. 958) notes ?has insinuated itself into the very heart of the dis cipline?. While this may reflect its analytical strengths and insights, others worry that insti tutionalization has entailed co optation. Has critical enquiry lost not only its verve, but also its commitment to political change? (NEW PARAGRAPH) Such charges have come, in part, from crit ical geographers outside the Anglophone world. For it should be noted that critical geog raphy is practiced (often in distinct ways) across the globe. The particular insights of, for example, Hungarian (Timar, 2003) or Japanese (Mizuoka, Mizuuchi, Hisatake, Tsutsumi and Fujita, 2005) critical geography needs to be better acknowledged (Bialasiewicz, 2003). Better linkages should also be forged with critical scholars in other disciplines. (NEW PARAGRAPH) On this point, the formation of the International Critical Geography group should be noted. This is a loose network of like minded geographers from Europe, Asia and North America who embrace internationalism and critical enquiry (Desbiens and Smith, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . A series of innovative workshops and conferences have been held, beginning with a gathering in Vancouver in 1998. NkB (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Blunt and Wills (2000); Castree and Gregory (NEW PARAGRAPH) (2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
criticalrationalism
A PhnosoPhY of science developed by Karl Popper (1902 94), asserting the progressive growth in knowledge through continued rational criticism. Nothing should be sacrosanct; everything should be open to scru tiny. While Popper believed that knowledge in the traditional sense of certainty, or justified true belief, was unobtainable, sustained rational criticism would allow us to get ?nearer to the truth? (Popper, 1945, vol. 2, p. 237). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Popper ranged enormously in his philo sophical interests over a long life, but two are particularly germane for critical rationalism. First, his thesis of fALSlflCATlON was devel oped in opposition to the verifiability principle of logical positivism. Verification, Popper argued, required that the truthfulness of a sci entific statement be unambiguously proven for every conceivable instance: past, present and future. This could never happen, said Popper (1959). Instead, he proposed that scientific statements are defined by their potential to be falsified. Science advances not by knowing what is true, but by knowing what is false. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Second, we have Popper?s ideas about the growth of human knowledge: he claimed that scientists begin work not with bare facts (again logical positivism?s contention), but with problems to be solved. The starting points are hYPOThESES, hunches, conjectures about potential solutions and then comparisons with existing theory (Popper, 1963). Should the new conjecture remain unfalsified and possess greater ?empirical content? than the old theory, the new should replace the old. By greater empirical content Popper meant the ability of the hypothesis to account for hitherto anomalous results, solve as yet unsolvable problems or make (correct) predictions about phenomena not so far predicted. When Einstein?s theory of relativity was conjectured, for example, it could not be falsified and made correct predictions that went beyond Newton?s old theory. Consequently, the cos mos became Einsteinian, science progressed and human knowledge grew. Behind the latter lay the strategy of critical rationalism: critical in that any theory demonstrably false was eliminated; and rational in that the best theory, the one with the most explanatory force and predictive power, was chosen among those that remained. There was qualified progress, but progress nonetheless. (NEW PARAGRAPH) It is odd that critical rationalism, and Popper?s writings more generally, were only barely taken up in GEOGRAPhY. Popper?s belief in realism, rationality and progress, as well as in the importance of critique, conjecture and scepticism about ultimate truth, were made for the discipline at least in its guise as science during the quANTlTATivE revolution. Instead, geographers clung to various forms of (NEW PARAGRAPH) positivism, the very philosophy that Popper thought he had demolished in 1935. Programmatic statements were made on the behalf of critical rationalism by some geog raphers including Wilson (1972), one of the key proponents of a scientific approach to geography during the 1960s, and by Bird (1975, 1989), and Chouinard, Fincher and Webber (1984) used Lakatos? critique and reformulation of Popper?s proposals to outline the conduct of research programmes in a nom inally scientific human geography. But critical rationalism was never realized in practice within geography. Indeed, the very idea of such a normative philosophical scheme set out in advance to generate scientific progress became increasingly unattractive, especially in the social sciences, after Kuhn?s (1970 [1962]) writings on paraDigms, which stressed the messiness of scientific practice and the role of ruptures and revolutions in scientific advance. Further, as human geography moved towards postmodernism and post structuraLism and their various commitments to anti reaLism, reLativism and incommensurability, the pro spects of Popper?s critical rationalism gaining hold in the discipline became ever more remote. tjB (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bird (1975). See also Critical rationalism study page: http://www.geocities.com/criticalrationalist/ (NEW PARAGRAPH)
critical theory
A primarily European tradi tion of social and political thought centrally concerned with critical reflection on capitaL ism and moDernity. It is closely associated with the work of the so called Frankfurt School, which emerged in Germany in the 1920s. The School formed amidst the defeat of left wing parties in western Europe, the degeneration of the Russian revolution into Soviet Stalinism and the rise of Fascism. The members of the School expanded classical marxism, drawing upon ideas from Freud, Weber and others outside the Marxist trad ition, and in particular sought to supplement the orthodox focus on poLiticaL economy with concepts drawn from the spheres of aes thetics, culture and phiLosophy. Its key mem bers were Theodor Adorno (1903 69), Max Horkheimer (1895 1973) and Herbert Marcuse (1898 1979); another scholar asso ciated with the School, Walter Benjamin (1892 1940), committed suicide fleeing Nazi occupied France. By then, most mem bers of the School had already moved to the USA, returning to Germany in the 1950s. The key postwar representative of critical theory is JÂÂ81rgen Habermas (1929 ). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Horkheimer (1975) defined critical theory in contrast to traditional theory (the neutral, objective stance claimed in the natural sci ences). Unlike traditional theory, critical social theory had to be reflexive and account for its own social origins and purposes. Its attitude was one of distrust towards the social rules and conventions encountered by individuals in their daily lives. The critical theorists identified new trends in capitalism with the emergence of monopolies, the closer associ ation of state and capital, the growth of bureaucracy, and the rationalization of social life linked to the dominance of instrumental reason. They explored issues of identity, authoritarianism, the spread of commodity production, reification and alienation. They were concerned with the way in which cul ture had become an industry, with popular cultural forms serving to distract workers from the increasingly repetitive nature of their daily work, thus promoting a sense of fatalism and blocking the potential for resist ance. Their conclusions on the ideological barriers to revolution in an increasingly one dimensional society tended to confirm a logic of domination that led to a pessimistic political immobility that they found it difficult to break out of. (NEW PARAGRAPH) JÂÂ81rgen Habermas has carried on the tradi tion of critical theory in the postwar period, but has also modified it in important ways. His early work presents a theory of knowledge constitutive interests (technical, practical and emancipatory) that guide different types of science empirical analytical, hermeneutic and critical (Habermas, 1987). Here, critical theory takes on the role of a therapeutic cri tique, modelled on Freudian psychoanalytic theory and directed towards freeing society from ideologically distorted perceptions. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Problems with this formulation led Habermas to take an important ?communica tive turn? in the formulation of critical theory in the 1970s (Habermas, 1984, 1987). Social life requires co operative, communicative interaction and Habermas undertakes the ?rational reconstruction? of the underlying sys tem of rules that speakers must master in order to communicate. Speakers uttering a sentence necessarily (though usually implicitly) make certain validity claims (to truth, rightness, sincerity, intelligibility). A genuine rational consensus on the basis of these validity claims can emerge only under conditions of free and unconstrained debate that Habermas summarizes as ?the ideal speech situation?. This serves as a basis for the critique of ideoL ogy as distorted communication and false consensus. Critical theory can thus be shown to be grounded on normative standards that are not arbitrary, but that are inherent in the very structure of Language and communication. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Habermas links these ideas to an evolution ary, developmental model of social evolution as a learning process. As societies evolve, ?sys tem? (which is to say those areas of social life coordinated through the steering mechanisms of money and power) becomes differentiated and uncoupled from ?lifewond? (the store house of background convictions and world views against which individuals come to a mutual understanding) (see figure). Capitalist modernization can then be criticized as a process of one sided rationalization, involving the ?colonizing? of the lifeworld through the over extension of steering mechanisms of markets, bureaucracy and technological rationality. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Habermas sees his work as an attempt to continue the enLightenment tradition in the face of the irrational challenges of postmod ernism (Habermas, 1990 [1985]). However, his own views have been criticized for present ing an ethnocentric view of evolution and rationality, and many have found his founda tionalist arguments for an ?inherent telos of speech? oriented towards consensus unconvincing. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Others have taken up the challenge posed in his writings in new ways. Thomas McCarthy, for example, is a leading figure in attempts to build links between Habermas? critical theory and elements of American pragma tism. McCarthy?s book length exchange with David Hoy over the relative merits of a critical theory based on the work ofHabermas and the genealogical approach of Foucault brings out superbly the relative strengths and weaknesses of the critical theory tradition (Hoy and McCarthy, 1994). Hoy argues that Foucault actually provides an alternative way of con tinuing the tradition of critical theory by devel oping an internal, genealogical critique that brings to light the historicity of our reason and self understanding. In response, McCarthy continues to defend Habermas? aim of con structing a systematic theory of reason and context transcending truth claims as a neces sary basis for critique. This aim also serves to differentiate Habermas? engagement with pragmatism from the more extreme construct ivist and ethnocentrist views of Richard Rorty (see Habermas? exchange with Rorty in Brandom, 2000). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Two further caveats are necessary. First, it is obviously the case that this particular tradition of critical theory does not have a monopoly on the concept of ?critical?. Habermas and Popper famously tussled over the critical claims of criticaL rationaLism, for example, while reaLism asserts its critical potential on the basis of a distinction between surface appearances and underlying, causal mechan isms in a stratified view of reality. Similarly, although the project of a criticaL human geography has invoked critical theory in the sense discussed here (see Gregory, 1978a, (NEW PARAGRAPH) , it is a much more heterodox tradition. In part and the second caveat this is because neither Habermas nor his critics have (NEW PARAGRAPH) paid much attention to the spatialities implicit in his formulations. Yet his work is, inevitably, a situated kNOWLEDGE: his writings have been a response to the dilemmas of postwar Germany seeking to come to terms with the ghosts of its fascist past, and many of his arguments are centred on a particular, even privileged, view of EUROPE. More than this, however, the colonization of the lifeworld that Habermas claims to identify mirrors, in a rad ically different register, Lefebvre?s account of the superimposition of abstract space over concrete space (Gregory, 1994: see also pro duction Of space), and may be glimpsed in an earlier form in the spatial impress of European colonial systems on the lifeworlds of native peoples (Harris, 1991). Of all those who have been associated with critical theory, however, it has probably been the tragic figure of Benjamin who has left the most enduring mark on hUMAN GEOGRAPhY: his experimental renderings of the city, in text and as montage, are powerful reminders that modernism was a critique of modernity and not merely a cele bration of it, and have inspired conceptual elaborations (e.g. Latham, 1999) and eloquent investigations (e.g. Pred, 1995). kB (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bernstein (1995b); Rush (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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