Social geography is a body of knowledge and a set of practices by which scholars
look at, and seek to understand, the social world. It is a strikingly diverse subdiscipline
of human geography that has many overlapping interests with other
forms of geography rather than any fixed or strict boundaries. Its diversity occurs
since the topics and approaches undertaken have varied over time and according
to individual geographers’ interests and politics. Consequently, Introducing
Social Geographies: From Difference to Action presents a cameo of that diversity
and Part I opens with two chapters that introduce and contextualize the
sub-discipline.
Chapter 1 starts by sketching out the types of social relations and places that
fascinate social geographers before explaining that (as with other academic
knowledge) social geography is an explicitly constructed field of knowledge. This
means scholars frequently concentrate on commonly agreed topics – especially
the differences and relations between people and the places and spaces they
use and shape in creating their lives. It also means social geographers cluster
into groups of scholars who practise (pursue, design, construct, promote, and
even fight for) certain ways of constructing their social geography. These preferences
depend on the context and culture in which they are working (e.g. a British
department enthusiastic about the methods and powers of spatial science1
perspectives in the 1970s, or a Canadian department focused on humanist
approaches in the 1980s, or an Australian department energized by poststructural
and postcolonial debates and challenges in the 1990s). These
contexts and preferences result in individual scholars taking up positions and
‘writing … from somewhere’ (section 1.2), from locations that are physical, cultural,
political and epistemological.
A more detailed account of these different approaches to social geography is
presented in Chapter 2. This chapter commences with questions about how we
can devise projects and knowledge about the social world. It explains how
scientific approaches to knowledge have been incorporated in social geography
before turning to an overview of the philosophical and theoretical perspectives
that have been adopted by different groups of scholars over time. While readers
1
INTRODUCTIONS AND
NEGOTIATIONS
PART
I
1.As noted in the Preface, all terms appearing in bold and italics are included in the Glossary.
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may be tempted to skip this chapter, it is a core foundation for the rest of the book
and provides a basis for understanding why geographers have differed in their
approaches to topics, e.g. ethnicity, gender, identity and so forth. The chapter
also provides two detailed sketches of how individual geographers have tackled
and worked their way through the theoretical trends and approaches that have
swept across social geography at different times. The chapter closes with further
emphasis on the positionality of our thinking and writing about social geography.
This provides encouragement in making self-critical reflections and explicit
decisions about how we view people, social experiences and the real-life (and
academic tensions) that result.
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Contemporary Social Geographies:
Perspectives on Difference, Identity,
Power and Action
3
1
Box 1.1 Social conditions and implications of life in Australian coal-mining towns
J.K. Gibson-Graham (1996a) The End of Capitalism (as we knew it): A Feminist Critique
of Political Economy. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Katherine Gibson is a geographer who has studied Australian coal-mining for many
years. Together with Julie Graham, she investigated both the economic and social
processes and changes that have shaped the lives of men, women and children in such
industries. In recent years they have written collaboratively as J.K. Gibson-Graham.
Excerpts of this work give a useful summary of the social conditions and challenges
that these mining communities face. They also illustrate the types of issue social
geography often concentrates on. They write:
Men and women in [Australian] mining towns see themselves as engaged in a joint project …
a good upbringing for their children, a house of their own on the coast, a comfortable retirement
or a different life, … after savings have been accumulated. Commitment to this joint project
(and the feudal domestic class process1
it promotes) is sustained by a discourse of love
and companionship between partners. (1996a: 228)
In the late 1980s the coal industry entered a crisis. … With employment levels declining the
Combined Mining Unions were forced … to accept the ruling of the Coal Industry Tribunal …
and new work practices were instituted in 1988. As part of the move towards greater ‘flexibility’
(for the companies), the new award involved widespread adoption of a new work roster called
the seven-day roster. (1996a: 225)2
The effect of this decision on the community and … upon women has been great. For many, the
domestic work of women has risen, and the established companionship patterns of mothers,
fathers and children have largely been destroyed. (1996a: 226)
The weekdays off between shifts and the long break between roster cycles allow men and their
non-working wives to see each other – but at times that do not coincide with children’s or
other friends’ time off. … The seven-day roster has stripped away the activities and notions
of the family. (1996a: 228)
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Social geography provokes thought and challenges us with the possibilities
and opportunities it provides. It gives us the chance to ask questions, construct
explanations – and discover yet more questions – about where and
how social differences and interaction occur. Gibson-Graham’s analysis of
life in Australian mining towns illustrates some of these possibilities (see
Box 1.1). Some social relations between men, women and children appear
similar. However, comparisons within towns and states (Queensland, vs
New South Wales) show that individual households and groups of women
experience mining life – and its social costs – in very different ways. .
More generally, social geography inquiries may build from an awareness
of contrasting social lives in different suburbs or rural towns; or it
may develop from recognizing different behaviours and interaction occurring
in a public square, workplace or pub. For me, social geography became
relevant after I completed a fourth-year economic geography dissertation
and was left with questions about how restructuring in a manufacturing
industry affected workers and their families differently in various
Australian cities. Gibson-Graham’s (1996a) work, summarized in Box 1.1,
raises parallel issues, showing how restructured work conditions affected
personal, parental and community relations. This type of geography shows
how individual, family and community life is closely linked. GibsonGraham
explores contrasting theories to account for the diverse ways men
and women negotiate their economic and social environment, and in some
cases, become politically active because of their situations. This initial
example emphasizes the fact that social geography can be established
wherever there is a variety of people relating in diverse ways and acting to
organize their lives in both a material and socio-cultural sense. In these
PART 1 INTRODUCTIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS
4
Box 1.1 (Continued)
In Central Queensland miners’ wives organized no public opposition to the seven-day roster.
By contrast in the Hunter Valley, an older established coal-mining region in New South Wales,
women successfully organized opposition to its institution on the grounds of its incompatibility
with family and community life. (1996a: 230)
1 A ‘feudal’ domestic class refers to arrangements where one partner (usually a woman) contributes labour
as a wife and mother that is appropriated by the other partner (usually a man) in return for provision
of shelter and social position associated with their conditions as a miner (e.g. access to housing and
services).
2 The seven-day roster involved eight-hour shifts on seven consecutive days, afternoons or nights. After
seven shifts, workers had one–two days off and at the end of a block of three seven-day shifts they received
four days off from work.
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settings, attention to social difference and interaction is usually
highlighted as geographers acknowledge that these social differences occur
unevenly over space and through the constructions of (and even struggles
within) specific places (e.g. in homes, on streets, in workplaces and so
forth) (Valentine, 2001).
Hamnett (1996: 3) defines social geography as ‘the geography of social
structures, social activities and social groups across a wide range of human
societies’. Yet it is perhaps more complicated – and more exciting – than
that, for social geographers are prepared to investigate the intimate connections
and collections of interactions that occur between diverse people
and the spaces and places in which this occurs. For instance, with GibsonGraham,
we can ask why some men and women in Australian coal-mining
towns faced domestic struggles and divorce, while others worked out
patterns of family and social life that absorbed (even accepted) the industry
changes. We can also ask why NSW miners’ wives became politically
active against the work rosters, while Queensland miners’ wives did not.
Questions of this kind invite us to consider issues of gender, class, identity
and political agency – some of the concepts that structure the remainder
of this book.
Thus, social geography can be thought of as a focused curiosity and an
explicit act of constructing (researching, mapping, writing) geographies
that:
• recognize forms of social difference and interaction; and
• acknowledge that these differences occur unevenly over space and
through the constructions of (and even struggles within) specific places.
This type of social geography involves us in choosing appropriate theories
and research practices in order to investigate and write work that respects
difference and highlights uneven patterns and struggles. These matters are
discussed in Chapter 2 since contemporary social geographies have developed
from a diverse heritage of theoretical and empiric histories. The chapter will
show that debates and tensions arising from this diversity provide a complex
but stimulating environment for current work. Coming to terms with
these debates is an important step in recognizing that social geographers
frequently wish to do more than record, organize and (re)present social differences
and interactions. They dare to ask why they occur. For instance,
Gibson-Graham (1996a) sought reasons for the enormous hardship being
faced by mining families and communities. By working alongside some of
these people, Katherine Gibson (1993) also recognized the need to
acknowledge and account for the very different relations and choices she
found in contrasting coal-mining regions.
In general, by asking why differences occur, social geographers must
consider different research perspectives or forms of explanation in order
to select and address their questions – and (re)present the answers they
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construct. Explicitly or not, they position themselves, their practice and
their writing in different ways, which in turn are both personal and political
acts. These issues are explained further in Chapter 2 as it addresses
some of the circumstances surrounding the construction of different geographic
knowledges. Social geography is shown to be a creative inquiry
that (implicitly or explicitly) negotiates both scientific and political issues
associated with establishing academic geographic knowledge.
1.1 BOOK STRUCTURE
In writing this book I have not attempted to produce a comprehensive
description of all forms of social geography. Other references and edited
collections tackle this job in various ways (see for example Hamnett, 1996;
Jackson and Smith, 1984; Pain et al., 2001; Valentine, 2001). Instead,
Introducing Social Geographies presents a specific commentary on social
geography as it appears primarily in Anglo-American and Antipodean contexts.
The book confines itself to these contexts for two reasons. First,
Anglo-American and Antipodean geographies have shared a common,
dominating socio-economic system – capitalism. This has influenced the
development of different types of geographic theory and the recognition of
different research subjects common to the capitalist societies in these
countries. Second, social geographies being written and beyond AngloAmerican
and Antipodean contexts are more often considered within studies
of (economic) development and (postcolonial) political and cultural geographies.
It is beyond the scope of this text to do justice to these literatures
although their influence is acknowledged in several sections of this book.
Within these economic, cultural and continental parameters, social
geography is presented as a critical but changing social science, and as a
purposeful and powerful opportunity to construct a field of valuable social
knowledges. Attention is given to how these knowledges are socially constructed;
how they draw on different epistemological approaches and
practices; and how they are presented from different positions and for
different purposes. This diversity is shown through the theoretical tensions
discussed in Chapter 2 as well as the specific foci on social differences presented
in Chapters 3–6. These latter chapters consider the core axes of
social difference shaping contemporary social geographies: class, gender,
ethnicity and sexuality. These differences support how we understand
people’s actions and multiple identities (across diverse categories of
difference), and how places and spaces are involved in both shaping such
differences and being marked by them.
But Introducing Social Geographies goes further than describing
approaches to social difference. The third part of the book shows that
beyond the specialist details that emerged in contemporary writings on
difference there remain some thorny questions and opportunities. First,
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the potential and power of social geography can be seen when attention is
turned from difference to the ways diverse people and groups will unite
around particular issues or shared experiences. Despite differences, there
are times and issues that appear to stimulate people to unite for temporary
or ongoing reasons. Identity appears as one important concept for understanding
this process. For example, people connect and assemble meanings
and values around certain social categories, relations or experiences. An
illustration of this process is given in Box 1.2. In this case, despite a variety
of differences in parenting, sexual attitudes, ethnicity and economic
circumstances, groups of women united under a lesbian identity to establish
a range of alternative livings spaces in the USA. Valentine’s (1997)
analysis of these activities shows how powerful a common (sexual) identity
can be for achieving material and social alternatives for lesbians who are
nevertheless a strikingly heterogeneous group of women.
Second, social geography can also advance by re-engaging with the
opportunity to move beyond the specificity of difference, and recognize
that geographies of power permeate the complexities of all social relations
and difference. These issues are addressed in Chapters 7–9 which trace
three ways in which social geographers move from the particularities of a
specific social variable (e.g. class or gender) to draw lines of relationship
between various categories of social difference. By focusing on identity,
power and action respectively, these chapters illustrate that contemporary
social geographies can acknowledge – but move beyond – social diversity
to address the possibility of (re)presenting people’s choices and actions as
diversity is negotiated through engagements with identity and power. Thus
the closing chapters of the book concentrate on the records of recent social
action that geographers have made, as well as synthesizing ways in which
social geography may continue to be a critically reflective means of seeing
the uneven ways societies use and rework the environments and specific
places in which they live.
1.2 WRITING FROM ‘SOMEWHERE’
Before moving into the body of this book, it is important to emphasize that
contemporary social geographies are particular accounts of what is often
complicated and debatable content. They are projects that are placed at the
intersection of diverse and sometimes contradictory concepts and experiences.
At times these are expressed through dualisms that indicate the
poles that might encompass the breadth of issues, for example, self and
other, difference and unity, local and global. Nevertheless, an increasingly
common quality within these geographies stems from the acknowledgement
that all such knowledges are constructed from somewhere; that geographies
are investigated and written by people who are working from specific
personal and academic positions. This has been the case particularly for
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PART 1 INTRODUCTIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS
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Box 1.2 Making lesbian space
G. Valentine (1997) ‘Lesbian separatist communities in the United States’, in Cloke, P.
and Little, J. (eds), Contested Countryside Cultures: Otherness, Marginalisation and
Rurality. London: Routledge. pp. 109–22.
Gill Valentine’s work on geographies of sexuality has included an account of how some
lesbians in the USA established rural female-only communities as an alternative society
in the 1970s and 1980s. These communal spaces were to counter the perceived
oppressive and heteropatriarchal conditions of the ‘man-made’ cities. Valentine
notes that these actions were attempting to create a positive social space to counter
lesbians’ past experiences. However, she also records that social differences between
the women meant that a united lesbian identity was always needing to be negotiated
as differences between women surfaced.
US lesbian feminists … [produced] their own very different sort of ‘rural idyll’ – nonheteropatriarchal
space – through the spatial strategy of separatism. By constructing the rural
as an escape from the ‘man-made’ city these women draw upon stereotypical representations
of the rural as a healthy, simple, peaceful, safe place to live. … [These] attempts to create
idyllic ‘communities’ by privileging the women’s shared identities or sense of sameness as
lesbians, over their differences. (1997: 109, 110)
Separatists established land trusts to make land available to women for ever. This control of
space, they believed, was essential because it would give women the freedom to articulate a
lesbian feminist identity, to create new ways of living and to work out new ways of relating to
the environment. (1997: 111)
A number of issues challenged the constructed unity lesbians tried to maintain.
Valentine (1997: 114–17) documents these conflicts:
• Boy children: some lesbian lands banned all boy children and therefore excluded
some lesbians because they were mothers of boys.
• Sexual and personal relations: different residents in lesbian lands experimented
with celibacy, monogamy and non-monogamy but different personal choices
affected women’s ability to mobilize support for other decision-making processes
in the communities.
• Class and financial resources: conflicts over ownership of land and ability to
improve it (e.g. electricity and fences), and sources of income created cleavages
between some women.
• Racism: while some lesbian lands drew on Black Power political ideology and
strategies to succeed, the dominance of white women and claims of racism showed
the fragility of these communities – and the limited access for African-American,
Jewish and native-American women.
• Prejudice against disabled women: the lack of accessibility of some lands and the
emphasis on physical labour reduced the way some women could participate in the
lands.
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western/Anglo social geographies since the 1980s as knowledge and research
choices have increasingly been recognized as culturally and politically
situated (see Box 1.3).
It is appropriate therefore that some note is made of my position and
interests in writing this book. I draw on specific academic identities to
describe myself as a social, feminist and rural geographer. These labels –
together with an interest in poststructural theories – locate most of my
interests in geography. These include investigating how social theories
may apply to the material and cultural worlds of rural Australia and
New Zealand: how concepts of identity, difference and social movements
play out in specific places (Liepins, 1998a; Panelli, 2002a; Panelli et al.,
2002); and how socio-economic processes and cultural relations affect the
social arrangements of rural households, farms, communities and industries
(Liepins, 2000a; Liepins and Bradshaw, 1999; Panelli, 2001; Panelli
and Gallagher, 2003). Throughout these considerations I have maintained
an interest in critiquing some of the power relations and discursive
processes by which social differences are established or maintained to the
disadvantage of some groups (e.g. women, farm families, young people).
Additionally, as an ‘Australian’ working in New Zealand and publishing in
international/western journals, I am conscious of both the influence and
status of the theoretical ‘metropolis’ of the North (Berg and Kearns, 1998)
and the opportunities for observing and constructing geographies from the
margins (Monk and Liepins, 2000). Finally, having had the advantage of a
postgraduate experience where a critical engagement with geography was
supported within a wider departmental environment that encouraged and
respected postgraduates’ thought, dialogue and writing, I have sought to
maintain the importance of listening across the spectrum of geographic
voices. This is manifest in the book through my use of materials generated
from a continuum of writers that stretch from the ‘biggest’ names of geographic
and wider social theorists to the work of ‘unknown’ students who
Perspectives on Difference
9
Box 1.2 (Continued)
In conclusion:
Lesbian separatists are one example of a marginalized group who have … attempted to live
out very politicized visions of a rural lifestyle, by emphasizing their shared identities. … [But
t]hese desires for mutual identification or homogeneity simultaneously appear to have generated
boundaries and exclusions … the reality is that in many lands, identities were not equally
valued, rather some were privileged over others. (1997: 119, 120)
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PART 1 INTRODUCTIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS
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Box 1.3 Examples of geographers writing from somewhere: reflections on position
R. Kearns (1997) ‘Constructing (bi)cultural geographies: research on, and with, people
of the Hokianga district’, New Zealand Geographer, 53: 3–8.
Robin Kearns has maintained a long interest in the social and political issues
surrounding health services. Working within a bicultural and multicultural situation in
Aotearoa/New Zealand, Kearns has reflected on the way he has conducted geographic
research into the provision of health services in Hokianga. He writes:
[T]he emplacement of Hokianga within my personal biography cannot be divorced from my
place within the narrative of Hokianga’s health system. I have visited the area since childhood,
and have a number of personal friends in the district. Furthermore, at the time of beginning
research, I had recently returned from a period in Canada where I had spent time in First
Nations communities. My empathy to indigenous welfare issues, as well as awareness of my
own cultural hybridity, thus contributed to (re)visioning a relationship with Hokianga people.
(1997: 5)
G. Valentine (1998) ‘“Sticks and stones may break my bones”: a personal geography
of harassment’, Antipode, 30: 305–32.
Gill Valentine has experienced a widely accepted identity as a ‘lesbian geographer’.
However, in 1998 she wrote of the difficulties around maintaining multiple identities,
especially in the face of harassment. In her account, she notes her different professional
and personal positions as she reflects on the ways she was seen prior to her
experience of victimization. She writes:
Although the choice of geographies of sexualities … as a research topic at the beginning of
my academic career was largely motivated by my own personal experiences … I never set out
to ‘come out’ within the discipline. … [Nevertheless] the discipline [of geography] somewhat
thrust the identity ‘lesbian geographer’ upon me. … [This] has placed me in a rather paradoxical
position, for while I have been held up as a ‘lesbian geographer’ who is assumed to
be ‘out’ both publicly and privately, I have actually been performing a very different identity to
my family, creating a very precarious ‘public’/‘private’, ‘work’/’home’ splintered existence.
(1998: 306, 307)
P. Routledge (1997b) ‘The imagineering of resistance: Pollock Free State and the
practice of postmodern politics’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
22: 359–76.
Paul Routledge has investigated a range of geographies ‘in action’ where he has
participated in political activities and written social, cultural and political geographies
about these events. In one case, he writes of the social protests and geographies of
resistance that surrounded the development of the M77 motorway in Glasgow,
Scotland. He opens a paper on this issue by quoting from his personal journal, and
then goes on to make his position(s) clear:
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have inspired me as they have tackled social geography at the University
of Otago. Student reflections from class sessions or reading logs are
included in a variety of forms throughout the book. These diverse positions
and interests of mine result in a wish to see social geography as a subdiscipline
that can be open to constructions from many positions while
recognizing the difficulties and hierarchies that exist in generating knowledge
within the academic arena (Johnston, 2000). The book forms both a
celebration and a critical reflection of social geography and I trust that it
will encourage readers to always question:
• What are the currently dominant forms of knowing?
• How can we highlight inequalities, challenges and alternatives?
• What do we think are the important questions for social geographic
inquiry?
Perspectives on Difference
11
Box 1.3 (Continued)
This journal entry refers to one of my personal experiences within the recent campaign against
the M77 motorway extension in Glasgow, Scotland, which represented the country’s first
anti-motorway ecopolitical conflict. I participated in the ‘No M77’ campaign as a member
of Glasgow Earth First! (one of the groups opposing the road) and Pollock Free State – an
‘ecological encampment’ that was constructed in the path of the projected motorway and
which acted as the focal point of the resistance. … In this paper, I want to examine the direct
action component of this resistance. … My analysis draws from my participation in the
campaign. (1997b: 360)
G. Pratt (1999b) ‘Geographies of identity and difference: marking boundaries’, in
Massey, D., Allen, J. and Sarre, P. (eds), Human Geography Today. Cambridge: Polity
Press. pp. 151–67.
Geraldine Pratt has conducted many years of research into the connections between
work and gender. Recently, her work with Filipina domestic workers has sought to
redress the fact that in her earlier work she had omitted the acknowledgement of such
workers. She reflects:
[In the past] as a white middle-class academic I simply did not see the geographies of Filipina
identity at one point in time. … [Now] I see our job as one of creating trouble … by making
visible boundary constructions and the production of difference, and by keeping alive the
question of who, inevitably, is being excluded as identities are defined. My current research
involves an effort to make visible the boundary that prevented me from seeing domestic
workers living in Vancouver in 1992. (1999b: 152, 164)
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• When and how do we respect and acknowledge other voices and
knowledges?
• How can questions and problems be best investigated, understood and
represented?
• What are the consequences and opportunities arising from our choices?
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