Introducing Human Geographies is the leading guide to Human Geography for undergraduate
students, explaining new thinking on essential topics and discussing exciting developments in
the field.
This new edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, and coverage is extended with new
sections devoted to biogeographies, cartographies, mobilities, non-representational geographies,
population geographies, public geographies and securities. Presented in three parts with 59
contributions written by expert international researchers, this text addresses the central ideas
through which Human Geographers understand and shape their subject.
Part 1: Foundations engages students with key ideas that define Human Geography’s subject matter
and approaches, through critical analyses of dualisms such as local–global, society–space and
human–nonhuman. Part 2: Themes explores Human Geography’s main sub-disciplines, with
sections devoted to biogeographies, cartographies, cultural geographies, development geographies,
economic geographies, environmental geographies, historical geographies, political geographies,
population geographies, social geographies, and urban and rural geographies. Finally, Part 3:
Horizons assesses the latest research in innovative areas, from non-representational geographies to
mobilities, securities and publics.
This comprehensive, stimulating and cutting-edge introduction to the field is richly illustrated
throughout with full-colour figures, maps and photos. These are available to download on the
companion website, located at www.routledge.com/cw/cloke.
Paul Cloke is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Exeter.
Philip Crang is Professor of Cultural Geography at Royal Holloway University of London.
Mark Goodwin is Professor of Human Geography and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University
of Exeter.
INTRODUCING
HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES
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INTRODUCING
HUMAN
GEOGRAPHIES
Third edition
EDITED BY
PAUL CLOKE, PHILIP CRANG
AND MARK GOODWIN
First edition published 1999 by Hodder Arnold
Second edition published 2005 by Hodder Arnold
Third edition published 2014 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2014 Paul Cloke, Philip Crang and Mark Goodwin
The right of Paul Cloke, Philip Crang and Mark Goodwin to be identified
as the editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Introducing human geographies / [edited by] Paul Cloke, Philip Crang
and Mark Goodwin. — Third edition.
pages cm
1. Human geography. I. Cloke, Paul J. editor of compilation.
GF41.I56 2013
304.2—dc23 2012046354
ISBN: 978-0-415-82663-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-4441-3535-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-52922-5 (ebk)
Typeset in AGaramond and Futura
by Keystroke, Station Road, Codsall, Wolverhampton
Contents
List of contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introducing Human Geographies: a guide xv
PART 1 Foundations 1
1 Local–global, Philip Crang 7
2 Society–space, Jo Little 23
3 Human–non-human, Hayden Lorimer 37
4 Modern–postmodern, Mark Goodwin 51
5 Self–other, Paul Cloke 63
6 Masculinity–femininity, Geraldine Pratt and Molly Kraft 81
7 Science–art, David Gilbert 96
8 Explanation–understanding, Rob Kitchin 117
9 Representation–reality, Mike Crang 130
PART 2 Themes 145
SECTION 1 BIOGEOGRAPHIES 147
10 Nature and human geography, Sarah Whatmore 152
11 Animals and plants, Russell Hitchings 163
12 Political ecology, Juanita Sundberg and Jessica Dempsey 175
SECTION 2 CARTOGRAPHIES 187
13 The power of maps, Jeremy Crampton 192
14 Geographical information systems, Muki Haklay 203
15 Counter-cartographies, Wen Lin 215
SECTION 3 CULTURAL GEOGRAPHIES 227
16 Imaginative geographies, Felix Driver 234
17 Place, Tim Cresswell 249
18 Landscape, John Wylie 262
19 Material geographies, Philip Crang 276
SECTION 4 DEVELOPMENT GEOGRAPHIES 293
20 Theories of development, Katie Willis 297
21 Rethinking development, Sarah A. Radcliffe 312
22 Survival and resistance, Paul Routledge 325
23 Human geographies of the Global South, Katherine Brickell 339
SECTION 5 ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHIES 349
24 Spaces of production, Kris Olds 353
25 Money and finance, Sarah Hall 369
26 Consumption–reproduction, Juliana Mansvelt 378
27 Commodities, Michael Watts 391
28 Economic globalization, Andrew Jones 413
SECTION 6 ENVIRONMENTAL GEOGRAPHIES 427
29 Global and local environmental problems, Sally Eden 431
30 Sustainability, Mark Whitehead 448
31 Climate change, Harriet Bulkeley 461
SECTION 7 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHIES 475
32 Modernity and modernization, Miles Ogborn 480
33 Colonialism and post-colonialism, Richard Phillips 493
34 Space, memory and identity, Nuala C. Johnson 509
SECTION 8 POLITICAL GEOGRAPHIES 527
35 Critical geopolitics, Joanne P. Sharp 530
36 War and peace, Scott Kirsch 542
37 Nationalism, Pyrs Gruffudd 556
38 Citizenship and governance, Mark Goodwin 568
SECTION 9 POPULATION GEOGRAPHIES 583
39 Age, Peter Kraftl 587
40 Health and well-being, David Conradson 599
41 Migrants and refugees, Khalid Koser 613
CONTENTSvi
SECTION 10 SOCIAL GEOGRAPHIES 623
42 Identities, Peter Jackson 628
43 Identity and difference: age, dis/ability and sexuality, Sarah L. Holloway 641
44 Exclusion, Jon May 655
45 Diasporas, Claire Dwyer 669
SECTION 11 URBAN AND RURAL GEOGRAPHIES 687
46 Urban form, Chris Hamnett 690
47 Urban senses, Lisa Law 706
48 Rurality, Paul Cloke 720
PART 3 Horizons 739
SECTION 1 NON-REPRESENTATIONAL GEOGRAPHIES 741
49 Emotional geographies, Hester Parr 746
50 Affects, Ben Anderson 760
51 Performances, Amanda Rogers 773
SECTION 2 MOBILITIES 787
52 Mobilities: politics, practices, places, Peter Adey 791
53 Touring mobilities, Claudio Minca and Lauren Wagner 806
54 Virtual mobilities, Julia Verne 821
SECTION 3 SECURITIES 835
55 Risk/fear/surveillance, David Murakami Wood 838
56 International resources, Klaus Dodds 852
57 Security life: new hazards and biosecurity, Stephen Hinchliffe 864
SECTION 4 PUBLICS 879
58 How to think about public space, Clive Barnett 883
59 Ethical spaces, Keith Woodward 899
Glossary 919
References 944
Index 1024
Section opener image sources 1057
CONTENTS vii
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Editors
Paul Cloke is Professor of Human Geography
at the University of Exeter.
Philip Crang is Professor of Cultural
Geography at Royal Holloway University of
London.
Mark Goodwin is Professor of Human
Geography and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at
the University of Exeter.
Contributors
Peter Adey is Professor of Human Geography
at Royal Holloway University of London.
Ben Anderson is Reader in Geography at
Durham University.
Clive Barnett is Professor of Geography at the
University of Exeter.
Katherine Brickell is Senior Lecturer in Human
Geography at Royal Holloway University of
London.
Harriet Bulkeley is Professor of Geography at
Durham University.
David Conradson is Senior Lecturer in
Human Geography at the University of
Canterbury.
Jeremy Crampton is Associate Professor
in Geography at the University of
Kentucky.
Mike Crang is Professor of Human Geography
at Durham University.
Tim Cresswell is Professor of Human
Geography at Royal Holloway University of
London.
Jessica Dempsey is Assistant Professor in
Environmental Studies at the University of
Victoria.
Klaus Dodds is Professor of Geopolitics at
Royal Holloway University of London.
Felix Driver is Professor of Human Geography
at Royal Holloway University of London.
Claire Dwyer is Senior Lecturer in Geography
and Deputy Director of the Migration
Research Unit at University College London.
Sally Eden is Reader in Environmental Issues
and Geography at the University of Hull.
David Gilbert is Professor of Urban and
Historical Geography at Royal Holloway
University of London.
Pyrs Gruffudd is Senior Lecturer in Geography
at Swansea University.
Muki Haklay is Professor of Geographical
Information Science at University College
London.
Sarah Hall is Associate Professor in Geography
at the University of Nottingham.
Chris Hamnett is Professor of Human
Geography at King’s College London.
Stephen Hinchliffe is Professor of Human
Geography at the University of Exeter.
Russell Hitchings is Lecturer in Human
Geography at University College London.
List of contributors
Sarah L. Holloway is Professor of Human
Geography at Loughborough University.
Peter Jackson is Professor of Human
Geography at the University of Sheffield.
Nuala C. Johnson is Reader in Human
Geography at Queen’s University Belfast.
Andrew Jones is Professor of Economic
Geography and Dean of the School of Arts
and Social Sciences at City University
London.
Scott Kirsch is Associate Professor in Geography
at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill.
Rob Kitchin is Professor of Human Geography
and Director of the National Institute of
Regional and Spatial Analysis at the National
University of Ireland, Maynooth.
Khalid Koser is Deputy Director and Academic
Dean at the Geneva Centre for Security
Policy.
Molly Kraft is a graduate student in geography
at the University of British Columbia.
Peter Kraftl is Reader in Human Geography at
the University of Leicester.
Lisa Law is Senior Lecturer in the School of
Earth and Environmental Sciences at James
Cook University.
Wen Lin is Lecturer in Human Geography at
Newcastle University.
Jo Little is Professor of Gender and Geography
at the University of Exeter.
Hayden Lorimer is Reader in Human
Geography at the University of Glasgow.
Juliana Mansvelt is Senior Lecturer in
Geography at Massey University.
Jon May is Professor of Geography at Queen
Mary, University of London.
Claudio Minca is Professor and Head of
the Cultural Geography chair group at
Wageningen University.
David Murakami Wood is Associate Professor
in Sociology and Geography and Canada
Research Chair in Surveillance Studies at
Queen’s University.
Miles Ogborn is Professor of Geography at
Queen Mary, University of London.
Kris Olds is Professor of Geography at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Hester Parr is Reader in Human Geography at
the University of Glasgow.
Richard Phillips is Professor of Human
Geography at the University of Sheffield.
Geraldine Pratt is Professor of Geography at
the University of British Columbia.
Sarah A. Radcliffe is Professor of Latin
American Geography and Fellow of Christ’s
College at the University of Cambridge.
Amanda Rogers is Lecturer in Human
Geography at Swansea University.
Paul Routledge is Professor of Human
Geography at the University of
Glasgow.
Joanne P. Sharp is Professor of Geography at
the University of Glasgow.
Juanita Sundberg is Associate Professor of
Geography at the University of British
Columbia.
Julia Verne is Lecturer in Human
Geography at Goethe University Frankfurt
am Main.
Lauren Wagner is Lecturer in Cultural
Geography at Wageningen University.
Michael Watts is Professor of Geography at
University of California, Berkeley.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORSx
Sarah Whatmore is Professor of Environment
and Public Policy and Fellow of Keble
College at the University of Oxford.
Mark Whitehead is Professor of Human
Geography at Aberystwyth University.
Katie Willis is Professor of Human Geography
at Royal Holloway University of London.
Keith Woodward is Assistant Professor of
Geography at University of Wisconsin-
Madison.
John Wylie is Professor of Cultural Geography
at the University of Exeter.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xi
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Many deserve our thanks for their help with
this third edition of Introducing Human
Geographies. Once more we are indebted to the
cohorts of first-year undergraduate students
that we have taught over the many years that
this book has been part of our professional
lives: at Lampeter first, and then at Bristol,
Aberystwyth, UCL, Royal Holloway University
of London and Exeter. They have consistently
shown enthusiasm for engaging with new, often
complex ideas and materials, so long as that
complexity is not used as an excuse for
excluding all but a small clique from the
conversation. We continue to strive to do that
enthusiasm justice. We thank too our expert
contributors, both those returning and those
new to this third edition. It was a pleasure to
edit their chapters and in the process to be
reminded once again of the vibrant intellectual
life across the range of Human Geography. This
book began life overseen by Hodder Education;
we thank in particular Bianca Knights and Beth
Cleall for their Herculean efforts on the third
edition. When Taylor & Francis acquired
Hodder’s Geography list, Andrew Mould and
Faye Leerink at Routledge put in the hard yards
to get us to publication. On a personal note,
special thanks are due, as ever, to Viv, Liz and
Will; Katharine, Esme and Evan; and Anne,
Rosa and Sylvie.
Paul Cloke, Philip Crang and Mark Goodwin
Acknowledgements
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Introducing Human Geographies is a ‘travel
guide’ into the academic subject of Human
Geography and the things that it studies.
Now in an updated and much extended third
edition, the book is designed especially for
students new to university degree courses. In
guiding you through the subject, Introducing
Human Geographies maps out the big,
foundational ideas that have shaped the
discipline past and present (in Part 1); explores
key research themes being pursued in Human
Geography’s various sub-disciplines (in Part 2);
and identifies some of the current research foci
that are shaping the horizons of the subject
(in Part 3).
Engaging with research literatures through
academic journals and books is an important
part of degree level study. The debates going on
within them are exciting, challenging us not
only to think about new subjects but also
to think in new ways. However, it can take
some time to get to grips with that published
research. It is huge and diverse. It is dynamic,
so that as a new student you can feel like you
are coming into conversations halfway through,
trying to figure out what people are talking
about, why they are interested in it, and how
come they are so animated about things.
Academic publications are also by and large
addressed to other researchers, deploying what
may feel like rather arcane vocabularies as
communicational shorthand. So not only has
the conversation already begun, but it can also
sound like it is in a foreign language. The ethos
of Introducing Human Geographies is to make
that cutting edge of contemporary Human
Geography accessible; to map out key areas of
study and debate; to guide you on forays into
its somewhat daunting collections of ideas and
interests; and to help you, as students of the
subject, to participate in its conversations.
The Human Geography you will be introduced
into here feels very different to some of the
popular images of the subject. It is not a dry
compendium of facts about the world, its
countries, capital cities, and so on. Apologies in
advance if this book is of limited help in getting
the geography questions right in a quiz or
television game show. Of course, knowing
geographical facts and information is useful and
important in all kinds of ways. But it is not
enough. Human Geography today casts
information in the service of two larger goals.
On the one hand, it seeks out the realities of
people’s lives, places and environments in all
their complexity. Geography is a subject that
lives outside the classroom, the statistical
dataset or the abstract model, gaining strength
from its encounters with what (somewhat
comically) we academics have a tendency to
call ‘the world out there’. On the other hand,
Human Geographers are also acutely aware that
this worldly reality is not easy to discern. The
nature of the world is not laid out before our
eyes, waiting for us to venture out blinking
from the dark lecture theatre or library so that
we can see it. ‘Reality’ only emerges through
the carefully considered ways of thinking and
investigating that we sometimes call ‘theory’.
As the contributions to this book show,
Human Geography is characterized by a
refusal to oppose ‘reality’ and ‘theory’, worldly
Introducing Human Geographies:
a guide
engagement and contemplative, creative
thought. Both are needed if we are to describe,
explain, understand, question and maybe even
improve the world’s human geographies.
As you may have noticed (when putting your
back out trying to pick it up . . .), this third
edition of Introducing Human Geographies is a
large book. It has a lot in it. Its contents are
diverse. In this general introduction we
therefore want to do three things. First, we
focus on what unites this variety by addressing
head on the question ‘What is Human
Geography?’. Second, we expand on the kinds
of approaches and styles of thought that
characterize Human Geography today across its
range of substantive fields. Finally, we briefly
map out the layout of the book itself, both in
terms of structure and presentational style,
offering some advice on how you might
navigate around it.
What is Human
Geography?
A common exercise for an initial Human
Geography tutorial or seminar is a request to
mine a week’s news coverage and to come back
with an example of something that seems to
you to be ‘human geography’. Have a go at
doing this now. Think about the last week’s
news. Draw up a shortlist of two or three
stories that strike you as the kinds of things that
Human Geographers would study or that you
think are ‘human geography’. Then reflect on
how you decided on these and what you
thought was ‘geographical’ about them. What
does your selection tell you about what human
geography means to you?
The word ‘geography’ can be traced back
to ancient Greece over 2,200 years ago.
Specifically, it was Eratosthenes of Kyrene
(ca. 288–205 BC), Librarian at Alexandria, who
wrote the first scholarly treatise that established
Geography as an intellectual
field, the three-volume Geographika (Roller,
2010). In Greek, Geography means ‘earth (geo)
writing (graphy)’. Writing the earth was what
Geographers did two millennia ago, and it still
describes what Geographers do today. In all
kinds of ways, it is a wonderful definition
of the subject. It speaks to Geography as a
fundamental intellectual endeavour concerned
with understanding the world in which we live
and upon which our lives depend. It expresses
how Geography is all around us, a part of our
everyday lives. It suggests that Geography is not
confined to academic study but includes a host
of more popular forms of knowledge through
which we come to understand and describe our
world. But it also raises questions, in particular
about breadth and coherence. To return to that
exercise of reviewing the week’s news for
examples of Human Geography, if what we
were looking for were cases of ‘earth writing’
then an awful lot of stuff could fit that brief in
some way. Most of the news is about things
happening on the earth.
How do we deal with that breadth, with
that seeming absence of specialization in
Geography? We would suggest there are
three sorts of responses: to recognize the
underpinning intellectual commitments built
into the very notion of geography; to embrace
the diverse topics and events to which these
relate; and to recognize the ways in which
different areas of Geography are defined and
organized. Let us take these in turn.
First, then, we need to think a little more
directly about the ‘geo’ in geo-graphy, about
what we mean by the earth in earth writing.
This word is not just a general designation
of everything around us but signals two
interconnected cores to Human Geography’s
interests (Cosgrove, 1994): what we might call
an ‘earthiness’ and a ‘worldliness’; or, to use
INTRODUCING HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GUIDExvi
more current academic vocabulary, the relations
between society and nature and between society
and space (see Figure I). In terms of ‘earthiness’,
the ‘geo’ in geography signifies ‘the living planet
Earth’, the biophysical environments composed
of land, sea, air, plants and animals that we live
in and with. These are central concerns for
Geographers. The relations between human
beings and the ‘nature’ we are also part of have
been a consistent preoccupation of Human
Geography. There is a second meaning to ‘geo’
as well, though, that is equally central, one we
use when we talk about ‘the whole Earth’ or
‘the world’. Here, to write the earth means to
explore its extents, to describe its areas, places
and people, and to consider how and why
these may have distinctive qualities. Human
Geographers have long been fascinated with
how various parts of the Earth’s surface
differ, with the relations between different
areas, and with ways of knowing this (such
as mapping and exploring). Geography
endeavours to know the world and its varied
features, both near to home and far away. The
‘geo’ in Geography designates this commitment
to world knowledge.
The precise forms such concerns with ‘earth’
and ‘world’ have taken in Geography have
varied over time of course, but both are central
to the project of Human Geography today.
Thus, Human Geographers lead debates
over what are now often called the relations
between society and nature, on environmental
understandings and values, on the causes and
responses to environmental change. They do
so at a variety of scales, from global concerns
with climate change to local debates over
particular environments and landscapes.
Human Geographers are also concerned with
how human lives, and our relations to nature,
vary across the surface of the Earth. Everything
happens somewhere and Human Geographers
argue that this matters. A variety of central
geographical notions reflect this: space, place,
region, location, territory, distance, scale, for
example, all try to express something about
the ‘where-ness’ of things in the world. In
contemporary parlance, Human Geographers
emphasize the relations between society and
space or what can be called spatiality. They
argue both that human life is shaped by ‘where
it happens’ and that ‘where it happens’ is
socially shaped. The world and its differences
are not innate; they are made. Human
Geographers study that making.
Our argument, then, is that Human Geography
today still lives up to the original meaning of
its name, revolving around both ‘writing the
earth’ (in contemporary academic parlance
the relations between society and nature) and
‘writing the world’ (the relations between
society and space). However, and this is the
second point we want to develop, these core
concerns are developed through a vast range
of substantive topics. In this book you will find
subject matters that range from the meanings
of development and modernity to how we
relate to plants when gardening, from the
international financial system to tourism,
from the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ to urban
gentrification, from global climate change
to shopping. And, for very good reasons,
you’ll also find a chapter largely devoted to
a discussion of oven-ready chickens. It is
quite common to have mixed feelings about
INTRODUCING HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GUIDE xvii
GEOGRAPHY
Geo Graphien
Writing the Earth: Writing the World:
Society–Nature relations Society–Space relations
Figure I Human Geography: writing the earth and
writing the world
this range. Many people choose to study
Geography because of it, appreciating the
wider understanding of human life such
breadth seems to offer in comparison to many
academic disciplines. In contrast, some react
against it, worrying that Geographers seem to
be ‘jacks of all trades’ and ‘masters of none’,
complaining that Human Geography today
seems to study things that ‘aren’t really
Geography’.
In our view, the diversity of Human Geography
is a strength not a weakness, for at least two
reasons. First, it reflects how Geography existed
well before, and exists well beyond, the kinds
of specialization promoted by academic
institutions over the last century or so
(Bonnett, 2008). Geography is notable for how
it challenges the divisions that have come to
characterize academic organizations, spanning
as it does the natural sciences, the social
sciences and the arts and humanities. The
world doesn’t present itself to us in those
categories and Geography resists being confined
within them. As an academic discipline
Geography has a healthy scepticism towards
the disciplining of knowledge. Its diversity
embodies that. Second, we would also
encourage you to embrace the diversity of
Human Geography in the spirit of being open
to what might matter in the world. It is
important that our thinking, and our academic
disciplines, are not defined by inertia, pursuing
topics simply because those are the subjects that
we have traditionally pursued. Convention is
not a good way to define and delimit what
counts as Human Geography. You may find
some of the subjects discussed in Introducing
Human Geographies more familiar to you – for
example, economic globalization – some less
so – the idea of ‘emotional geographies’,
perhaps – but all of them represent how
Human Geography today is pursuing its tasks
of ‘writing the earth and the world’. Knowing
the traditions of Human Geography is
enormously valuable, but one of the crucial
lessons we learn from that history is that what
counts as Human Geography has always been
subject both to change and to contestation (see
Livingstone (1992) for an excellent, sustained
analysis of this). For instance, shaped by the
social worlds in which it was being produced,
for much of its history Human Geography
largely ignored over half the world’s human
beings. It reduced human to man. Even well
into the latter half of the twentieth century,
INTRODUCING HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GUIDExviii
Figure II Which of these photographs of work look more like it should be in a Human Geography textbook
to you? Why? Credit: (left) Jose Luis Palez, Inc./Corbis; (right) Brownie Harris/Corbis
Economic Geographers largely ignored the
domestic work done by women at home;
Development Geographers paid too little
attention to the gendered nature of both
development problems and practice; issues and
understandings that were seen as feminine were
routinely trivialized and cast as less worthy of
academic attention. Human Geography was
masculinist (Women and Geography Study
Group, 1997; Domosh and Seager, 2001).
Countering this involved introducing into
Geography many novel topics and ideas. The
issue for us, then, is not whether a topic is
familiar as Geography but whether attending
to it is part of ‘writing the earth’ in ways that
have value.
Let’s go back to the example of the oven-ready
chicken that we mentioned earlier. We are
assuming that if you told friends or family
you were studying the Human Geography of
chickens they might raise a quizzical eyebrow.
But in fact, as Michael Watts explains in
Chapter 27, the lives and deaths of chickens
speak profoundly to how human societies today
relate both to our living Earth and to the spatial
organization of the world. An oven-ready
chicken such as that pictured in Figure III
embodies very particular ways for human
beings to relate to nature, based on logics and
practices of domestication, industrialized
production, purposive modification and
commodity consumption that reach well
beyond this one member of the animal
kingdom. The oven-ready chicken is also an
embodiment of forms of spatiality that are
very common in the world today. Different
people and places are all connected together
through the economic systems of the chicken
world – the consumers eating it, the farmers
raising it, the large companies controlling its
production and its distribution, the scientists
genetically modifying it – but at the same time
these connections are forgotten or hidden
through a distancing of places of chicken
production and consumption – even avid meat
eaters would be unlikely to want to see video
footage of broiler production and death as they
tuck into their roast bird. An oven-ready
chicken presents us with the geography of the
modern world on our plates. It is Geography.
Generally, then, Introducing Human
Geographies presents a diverse and dynamic
subject, and poses questions for you about what
might count as valuable forms of geographical
knowledge. There is, however, also a third
response to the diversity inherent in
Geography’s intellectual remit: to organize it
into various ‘sub-disciplines’ and research
specialisms. The very idea of Human
Geography already manifests this response,
reflecting the widespread division between
Physical Geography (placed in the natural
sciences) and Human Geography (located
in the social sciences and humanities).
Contemporary research literatures and
curricula take the process of dividing and
specializing much further, organizing
INTRODUCING HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GUIDE xix
Figure III Human Geography? Credit: British
Chicken Information Service
Human Geography itself into the kind of
sub-disciplines we present in Part 2 of this
book (biogeographies, cartographies, cultural
geographies, development geographies,
historical geographies, political geographies and
so on). These each possess their own research
literatures (via their specialist journals) and,
indeed, their own introductory textbooks.
Quite often these sub-disciplinary designations
form the basis of how Human Geography is
taught within universities. Sub-disciplines are
helpful in a number of ways. They map out
the diversity of Geography into recognizable
areas of work. They promote the development
of expertise. They focus Geographers’
engagements with other academic disciplines
(Political Geographers engaging with Political
Science and International Relations, Historical
Geographers with History, and so on). But
they can also be problematic. If one gets too
hung up on sub-disciplines one can lose the
anti-disciplinary holism that is one of the
strengths of the subject. The much discussed
‘divide’ between Physical and Human
Geography is a case in point. Furthermore,
sub-disciplinary labels bear the imprint of
university bureaucracy and job titling; we
academics are very used to them but outside of
universities they don’t much help people relate
to the Geography that we do. So, the useful
foci provided by the various sub-divisions
of Geography need to be accompanied by
an ongoing commitment to seeing the
distinctively geographical contribution that
they make to understanding our worlds. At
its best, Human Geography has a strong
intellectual coherence, but applies it with an
invigorating catholicism.
INTRODUCING HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GUIDExx
• Geography means ‘earth writing’. As a subject with that aim, Geography is notable for its
wide-ranging concerns and interests.
• The first meaning of the ‘geo’ in Geography is ‘the Earth’. The first of Human Geography’s
main intellectual contributions is to understand the relations between human beings and the
natural world of which we are a part.
• The second meaning of the ‘geo’ in Geography is ‘the world’. The second of Human
Geography’s main intellectual contributions is to understand the world both near and far.
More abstractly, this means recognizing how all facets of human societies – the economic,
the environmental, the political and so forth – are bound up with questions of ‘spatiality’.
• These fundamental concerns of Human Geography are pursued across diverse and
changing subject matters. We would encourage you to be open to that diversity and
change; resist restricting your Human Geography to topics and approaches with which you
are already familiar.
SUMMARY
Approaching Human
Geography today
Up to this point we have been outlining what
Human Geography is about, emphasizing its
foci on both ‘the earth’ (society–nature
relations) and ‘the world’ (society–space
relations). Now we turn to how Human
Geographers approach these issues and the
kinds of knowledge that they try to create.
Our interest is not in well-defined schools of
thought or even intellectual paradigms but in
the looser sensibilities that shape how Human
Geography is done today.
At the outset, it is important to note that the
approaches of Human Geography have changed
over time and differ from place to place.
Human Geography in the 1920s or 1960s was
different to Human Geography today. The
approaches to Human Geography in Germany,
Brazil or China are not identical to those in
Britain. Even individual university departments
can have distinctive research cultures. In fact
the situation is more complex still; as you may
find in your courses, at any one time and in any
one place there are likely to be different kinds of
Human Geography being done. There is not a
single agreed view on what kinds of knowledge
Human Geography should produce. Introducing
Human Geographies contains some of that
variety; it does not present a single version
of the subject. But it does reflect and support
some recurrent emphases that, in our view,
characterize much of Human Geography
today. We see these as commitments to five
kinds of knowledge: description, experience,
interpretation, explanation and critique (see
Table I). Not all of these are equally endorsed
by all Human Geographers, indeed they are
often argued over; but they are commitments
you will find frequently evidenced both in this
book and in the course of your studies. Let us
elaborate on each in turn.
First, then, Human Geography looks to
describe the world. Sometimes dismissed with
the epithet ‘mere’, in fact description has a
very special value. Geographical description
is not synonymous with dry compendia of
information about a region or place. It involves
attending to the world unusually carefully. The
nature of that attention can vary. It might mean,
for example, fashioning and mapping forms
of statistical data (perhaps via a Geographical
Information System (GIS)) that allow us to
describe things that we can’t fully see with our
own eyes – spatial differences in wealth or access
to services perhaps. It might involve tracing
out the often hidden networks of connections
linking people and places, as when Human
Geographers ‘follow’ the things that people
routinely consume (our food or clothes, for
example) to see how they came to be, where
they come from, and what kinds of trade govern
their movements (e.g. Cook, 2004). Or it might
mean being peculiarly observant in person.
Think, for example, about how we normally
move around the world, head often down,
taking our surroundings somewhat for granted.
Now contrast that to a more geographical
engagement with place, perhaps a public square,
where we look to document the details of the
built environment, its history, the people who
are present and absent, the kinds of action going
on. Here, to describe a place geographically is
to bear witness to its material textures and the
forms of life that unfold through it. Our
argument, then, is that Human Geography is an
attentive discipline. It describes in order to
reveal what we might otherwise overlook and to
bring into focus what we might otherwise only
vaguely perceive. It crafts ways of presenting
the fruits of this attention, using forms of
description that range from maps to statistics,
prose, photography and film/video-making.
Second, Human Geography also commits to
understand the world through experience. In
INTRODUCING HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GUIDE xxi
part we see this in the discipline’s commitment
to fieldwork. Geography places a value on
trying to understand issues not just from afar
but through actually being there, in a place,
amongst the action, conversing with people,
getting a feel for things. The status of this kind
of first-hand field knowledge is philosophically
complex, but Human Geography tends to view
understanding gained only from more ‘remote’
sorts of sensing with some suspicion. It is not a
subject that is comfortable with being confined
to the lab or library. Important here too are the
people-centred approaches trumpeted initially
under the label humanistic geography (for
exemplary collections, see Ley and Samuels
(1978) and Meinig (1979); for a more recent
revisiting of such humanistic work see
Holloway and Hubbard (2000)). Humanistic
Geography emphasizes engaging with people’s
real lives, their values and beliefs, their daily
preoccupations, their hopes and dreams, their
loves and hates, what they think about things,
INTRODUCING HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GUIDExxii
Type of
knowledge
Approach Illustrative examples
Description Paying close attention to, and finding
ways to represent, geographies that
we normally struggle to perceive.
Statistical descriptions, GIS
visualizations and maps; tracings of
spatial networks and associations;
detailed evocations of particular
places.
Experience Understanding geographies as part of
human experience.
The emphasis placed on the
experiential knowledge generated by
fieldwork; humanistic concerns with
understanding other people’s diverse
experiences of the world.
Interpretation Recognizing and engaging with the
meanings of the world’s geographies.
Work focusing on geographical
representations and on the discourses
of which they are a part. Often
associated with the so-called ‘cultural
turn’.
Explanation Explaining why the world’s
geographies exhibit the forms and
processes that they do.
Geographical explanations range
from spatial science’s search for
spatial laws to (more commonly
today) socio-spatial analyses of
causal processes.
Critique Rigorously evaluating and judging the
world’s geographies, as well as one’s
own and others’ understandings of
them.
Critique can be understood as a
broad stance to geographical
knowledge. It has also come to be
associated with bodies of work that
explicitly designate themselves as
forms of ‘critical geography’.
Table I Approaches to Human Geography today: a schema
the ways they feel about and sense their
surroundings. Human Geographers are thus
not only interested in experiencing places for
themselves; they want to understand other
people’s geographical experiences and thoughts
in all their variety.
A commitment to interpreting the meaningful
nature of the world is apparent here too.
Geographies are not just brute realities; it is
fundamentally human to invest the world with
meaning. We don’t only sense the world, we
make sense of it. Human Geography is
concerned with interpretation insofar as it
recognizes the importance of the meanings of
things. Think, for example, about the interest
Geography has in ‘the Earth’ and society–
nature relations. The things we call ‘natural’,
indeed the very notion of the ‘natural’, are
deeply imbued with meanings. Reflect for
a few seconds on geographical notions like
‘wilderness’ or ‘rainforest’ or ‘the tropics’. These
words are not narrowly factual; they come with
a host of (often complex and even conflicting)
meanings and connotations. The same is true
of how we describe the world’s different spaces.
Consider what geographical designations such
as ‘urban’, ‘suburban’ and ‘rural’ might mean
to you and others; or the continents (Europe,
Asia, Africa, Antarctica . . .); or a seemingly
simple geographical label like ‘The West’ or
‘The Western World’. All these terms are, to
use a colloquialism, ‘heavily loaded’. Human
Geography’s approaches here are informed by
wider bodies of thought in the humanities
on interpretation and meaning (with great
names like ‘hermeneutics’, ‘semiotics’ and
‘iconography’). They are also often identified
with what has been called ‘the cultural turn’
taken within the discipline since the 1990s
(Barnes and Duncan, 1992). Prominent is a
focus on representation, with research teasing
out the meanings given to geographies in forms
both obviously imaginative (literature, the arts,
film and television drama and so on) and less
obviously so (maps, documentaries, news
reports, policy documents, etc.). Interpreting
these representations is important because they
are not just an imaginative gloss that we
humans add to our worlds, a subjective filter
that obscures objective reality. Representations
shape how we see things, think about them and
act with and upon them. They partly make our
worlds. They are part of reality. In academic
terminology, by interpreting what things mean
we engage with the discourses that produce the
world as we know it. As an interpretive
endeavour, Human Geography both looks to
understand those discourses and to present
other ways of ways of seeing, describing and
acting upon our geographies.
So far we have outlined that when Human
Geographers undertake their ‘earth writing’
(geo-graphy) they look to describe, experience
and interpret. A fourth commitment has
flickered in and out of these discussions: to
explanation. Human Geography is not only
concerned with what the geographies of the
world are, but also with how they came to be.
The nature of geographical explanation has
varied over time and is subject to much debate.
Divergent views are underpinned by different
understandings of both the world ‘out there’
and the sorts of knowledge required to grasp it.
For some, Human Geography should be a
spatial science, formulating and testing
theories of spatial organization, interaction and
distribution in order to establish universal
spatial laws about why geographical objects are
located where they are and how they relate to
each other. Emerging in the 1960s, spatial
science distinguished itself from earlier regional
geographies, criticizing them for being overly
descriptive and lacking the explanatory power
of scientific analysis. However, other
approaches in Human Geography resist the
equation of explanation with spatial science.
INTRODUCING HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GUIDE xxiii
They are wary of its kind of ‘social physics’.
Historical Geographers, for instance, emphasize
how forms of historical narrative can have
explanatory power. To put it crudely, a
historical approach explains the world today by
understanding past events and processes. More
generally, most Human Geography is wary of
explaining things via reference only to spatial
factors (what is called ‘spatial reductionism’),
emphasizing instead the two-way relations
between ‘space and society’. Aspects of society
– the modern nation-state, for example, or the
capitalist economy – are seen both to shape
the nature of space and themselves to have
spatial dimensions. Thus, there are no universal
spatial laws that can explain our geographies;
any explanation must recognize the socially
produced nature of spatiality. There is also a
concern about seeking universal laws as
explanations; instead, a range of theories –
most visibly represented by an approach known
as ‘critical realism’ (Sayer, 2000) – have sought
to understand causality in relation both to
more abstract powers and more concrete,
contingent, contextual factors. As you have
probably gathered by now, it is hard to do
justice to these sorts of complex debates in a
brief introduction (sorry!). But, in essence, our
view is that Human Geography today widely
exhibits a commitment to explain the
geographical phenomena it studies, but
generally undertakes that explanation through
nuanced accounts that weave together
underlying tendencies/forces with more
contextually specific factors.
Fifth, and finally, contemporary Human
Geography is concerned with critique. It is
easy to misunderstand this word. In everyday
speech, when we say someone is being critical
what we often mean is that they are being
negative or finding fault. But that is not what
we have in mind here. True critical thought is
as much about seeing strengths as weaknesses.
Critique, then, means exercising judgement.
For Human Geography, a commitment to
critique means that the subject not only
describes, experiences, interprets and explains
but also rigorously evaluates the world’s
geographies. A general consequence of this
commitment is that the ‘rightness’ of our
answers to geographical questions is not given.
There is room for debate and argument.
Critique is not just a matter of expressing one’s
opinion, but its reasoned judgement involves
values, beliefs and perspectives. For all of us, as
students of Human Geography, there are not
often agreed correct answers that we simply
have to remember. Doing Human Geography
involves developing rigorous analyses of issues,
evaluating both information and arguments,
and thereby figuring out not only what the
answers are but also what the most important
questions might be. This means not taking
things for granted, questioning the assumptions
held by others and, crucially, ourselves. Critical
thought – and this is a tricky balance –
combines a determined, questioning scepticism
with a profound openness to unfamiliar ideas
and voices. It seeks to evaluate present and past
conditions and to disclose future possibilities
and alternatives.
More narrowly, these general critical attitudes
have shaped distinctive bodies of philosophy,
theory and practice that take them forward.
Within Human Geography, ‘critical geography’
has emerged as a designation that folds in
earlier appeals to radicality – as seen in the
foundation in the 1970s of the ‘radical journal
of geography’, Antipode – and the ‘dissident
geographies’ of feminist, Marxist and
post-colonial writers (Blunt and Wills, 2000).
The words of ACME, an open access online
journal of ‘critical geography’, give a sense of
this; for this journal, ‘analyses that are critical
are understood to be part of the praxis of social
and political change aimed at challenging,
INTRODUCING HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GUIDExxiv
dismantling and transforming prevalent
relations, systems and structures of
exploitation, oppression, imperialism,
neoliberalism, national aggression and
environmental destruction’ (ACME, 2012).
A range of work discussed in this third edition
of Introducing Human Geographies would fit
that definition in some part, but critical
thinking in the more general sense is not
necessarily signed up to particular political
colours. It spans, too, both cerebral
philosophical thought and the kinds of work
more directly invested in practical change.
Critique, then, can be taken as a more general
stance, committed to questioning, reasoned
judgement, and a hopeful search for possible
better futures. That stance can be usefully
adopted within your own studies and writing
of Human Geography.
Above, we have outlined various commitments
that shape Human Geography today – to
description, experience, interpretation,
explanation and critique. Whilst keyed into
wider debates over forms of knowledge and the
interests they pursue, these five categories are,
inevitably, something of a heuristic device.
They are not exhaustive. They are also not
mutually exclusive; many kinds of geographical
description might also see themselves as
interpreting and/or explaining and vice
versa, for example. But, with those caveats, we
believe that this schema conveys some of the
principal rationales for why Human Geography
undertakes its ‘earth writing’ and a sense of
what you can achieve by studying it.
INTRODUCING HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GUIDE xxv
• Human Geography undertakes its ‘earth writing’ for a number of reasons. It is helpful to
reflect on these reasons as you develop your own geographical imagination.
• We have suggested five undertakings that shape Human Geography today. We termed
these: description, experience, interpretation, explanation and critique.
• This is not an exhaustive list of all the rationales that underpin Human Geography but one,
some or all of these commitments shape a great deal of the scholarship that you will be
introduced to in this book.
SUMMARY
Introducing Human
Geographies: finding your
way around
We have used the metaphor of a travel guide
to describe this book. Guidebooks are not
designed to be read from front to back in one
go. They set scenes, provide contexts, and then
as a reader we dip into them, dependent on our
interests and our travel schedules. This new
edition of Introducing Human Geographies is the
same. It is designed to accompany and guide
you as you find your way around Human
Geography. Exactly how you read it, which
parts you spend most time in and so on, will
depend on your own intellectual itinerary and
your programme of studies. The format we
have created for the book, with a large number
of comparatively short chapters organized into
parts and sections, supports that kind of
tailored reading ‘on the go’.
Nonetheless, it may be helpful to explain the
book’s structure. The fifty-nine main chapters
are organized into three parts – Foundations,
Themes and Horizons. The nine chapters in
Foundations (Part 1) give you the latest
thinking on some of the ‘big questions’ that
have long shaped the thinking of Human
Geographers. An introduction to Part 1
says more about the individual chapters,
but let us a say a little here about their remit.
In setting out our foundations we have
eschewed two common approaches: on the
one hand, a narrative or episodic history of the
subject; and on the other, abstract summaries
of key theoretical approaches or ‘-isms’. (Often
these are offered in combination; a chronology
of different theoretical schools, dated on the
basis of when they became influential within
Human Geography.) There are excellent books
that adopt variants of such approaches (for
example Cresswell (2013), Livingstone (1992)
and Nayak and Jeffrey (2011)) that we would
encourage you to read, but for our purposes
here we wanted to avoid a division of
theoretical foundations from the geographies
we live with every day. The foundations
presented here therefore weave together
conceptual ideas with examples and
illustrations. Each chapter is framed around
a binary relationship that frames both the
topics Human Geography focuses on (its ‘geo-’)
and how it thinks about them (the nature of
its ‘-graphy’). Binaries are often central to
how we think; critically engaging with them
provides a powerful window on key elements
of geographical thought (see also Cloke and
Johnston (2005)). The chapters in Part 1 may
not match with particular, substantive lectures
in a taught course, and don’t always exist as
easily locatable debates in the discipline’s
journals. They crop up everywhere because in
many ways they deal with some of the most
important questions to think about as a new
Human Geography student. They give you
a sense of why Human Geographers pursue
more specific studies in the way they do and
introduce you to ideas and ways of thinking
that you will be able to use across a range of
substantive topics.
Those substantive areas of the subject are
turned to directly in the second and largest
part of the book, Themes. It has thirty-nine
chapters, divided into eleven sections
addressing major thematic ‘sub-disciplines’
of Human Geography in alphabetical
order: biogeographies, cartographies, cultural
geographies, development geographies,
economic geographies, environmental
geographies, historical geographies,
political geographies, population geographies,
social geographies, and urban and rural
geographies. Each of these sections has its
own brief editorial introduction, setting out
both the sub-disciplinary field and how the
following chapters engage with it. This part
of the book provides you with thoughtprovoking
arguments on the key issues
currently being debated within sub-disciplines,
as well as giving you a feel for the distinctive
kind of Human Geography undertaken
within each.
As we noted above, thematic sub-disciplines
are one of the major ways in which teaching
curricula are organized and research activity
structured, to the extent that geographers are
often labelled according to these specialisms (as
economic geographers, political geographers,
and so on). However, the world we live in is
(unsurprisingly) resistant to these neat
classifications. Economy and politics and
culture and environment (and so on) all
interweave with each other. You can’t go out
and find something that is purely ‘economic’
(or purely political, cultural or environmental).
INTRODUCING HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GUIDExxvi
In fact, a lot of the most innovative work in
Human Geography goes on in the border zones
between these sub-disciplinary territories. For
these reasons, the final part of the book,
Horizons, comprises eleven chapters organized
around four contemporary research themes that
do not fit neatly in any one sub-discipline. The
four foci – non-representational geographies,
mobilities, securities and publics – each
have their own brief editorial introduction,
contextualizing the chapters that follow. Each
highlights current agendas in the discipline
that are influencing debates in a number of its
sub-disciplines.
Stylistically, while every chapter has its own
authorial signature all the contributions
combine discussions of challenging ideas and
issues with accessible presentation. Unfamiliar
academic terminology is kept to a minimum,
but where central to an argument and not
explained fully at the time it is marked in bold
type and defined in the Glossary at the back of
the book. Chapters include periodic summaries
of key points, enabling you to pull out the
central lines of argument. Potential discussion
points are given at the end of chapters, offering
options for group debates or individual essay
plan development. Generally, Introducing
Human Geographies aims to make you think
and to challenge you intellectually, but to do
that through being lively and engaging.
Scholarly knowledge doesn’t have to be dry and
self-obsessed. Chapters are deliberately short
and punchy, but there is guidance for how to
develop and deepen your knowledge via
suggested further readings included at the end
of chapters and the section introductions.
The mention of further readings marks an
appropriate place for us to stop introducing.
Like any guidebook, the intention of
Introducing Human Geographies is to take you
around the subject so you can experience it for
yourself. We rarely read guidebooks without
travelling; the book is a companion on a
journey not a destination in and of itself.
Likewise, you shouldn’t read this book without
moving on from it to experience more directly
the areas of research and debate it guides you
towards. If it helps to mix metaphors, think of
this book as an introduction agency, setting you
up for a relationship with Human Geography.
Studying a subject means getting to know it,
figuring out what you like about it and what
you don’t, and maybe even falling in love with
some of what it does. It also means ‘asking it
out’. Let Human Geography get to know you;
introduce it to your life, your enthusiasms;
liberate it from the library, lecture or textbook.
Take some of the geographical ideas in this
book to your favourite haunts and see what
they make of each other. In other words,
see what happens when not only are you
introduced to Human Geography but Human
Geography is introduced to you. Use this book
as a guide both to reading Human Geography
and to doing it yourself by thinking
geographically. Join in the age-old endeavour
of ‘earth writing’.
INTRODUCING HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GUIDE xxvii
1. Look at a newspaper from the last week. Identify three stories that seem to you to address
Human Geography topics. Explain your choices and why you think they are ‘geographical’.
2. What makes Human Geography a distinctive subject?
DISCUSSION POINTS
INTRODUCING HUMAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GUIDExxviii
3. ‘Human Geography is a down-to-earth subject, concerned with facts not theories.’ Discuss
this assertion.
4. Outline your understanding of Human Geography’s commitment to one of the following:
description, experience, interpretation, explanation, critique.
There are a number of other texts that fulfill different functions to this book, but offer valuable
complementary overviews and resources that help introduce Human Geography. These include:
Bonnett, A. (2008) What is Geography? London: Sage.
In this book Alastair Bonnett develops his personal response to the question ‘what is geography?’. His
answer is thoughtful and thought-provoking, casting geography not as just another academic subject but
as ‘one of humanity’s big ideas’. The book covers the two central foci identified in this chapter (what we
called ‘writing the earth and the world’); geographical interests in cities and mobilities; the doing of
geography in forms of exploration, mapping, connection and engagement; and the institutionalization
of geography within and beyond universities.
Cloke, P., Cook, I., Crang, P., Goodwin, M., Painter, J. and Philo, C. (2004) Practising Human
Geography. London: Sage.
This book focuses on how research in Human Geography is done, covering both the production of
geographical materials or ‘data’ and the production of varying kinds of geographical ‘interpretations’ of
these data. This, and other books on geographical research methods, provide invaluable links between
the kinds of materials introduced in this volume and the opportunities that exist for you to undertake your
own geographical investigations in project work and independent dissertations.
Gregory, D., Johnston, R.J., Pratt, G., Watts, M.J. and Whatmore, S. (eds.) (2009) The Dictionary of
Human Geography (5th edn). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
This dictionary has concise but comprehensive definitions and explanations relevant to almost every
aspect of Human Geography. As a reference tool it is invaluable and has no better. Human Geography
can be hard to engage with because of the density of its specialist terms. This is a book you will be able
to use throughout your time studying Human Geography as you look to master that specialist vocabulary.
Kneale, P. (2011) Study Skills for Geography, Earth and Environmental Science Students (3rd edn).
London: Hodder Education.
A guide to the study skills that Geography students need and use at university level. A very useful book.
Livingstone, D. (1992) The Geographical Tradition. Oxford: Blackwell.
A scholarly rendition of the history of Human Geography, a topic we pay comparatively little attention to
in this book. Livingstone concentrates on the longer-term history of the subject rather than on its recent
developments. Throughout, one gets fascinating insights into how the concerns of Human Geographers
have run in parallel with wider social currents.
FURTHER READING
PART ONE
FOUNDATIONS
Introduction
Sometimes the start of Human Geography
textbooks, and indeed courses, can be very
daunting. This is because of the perception by
some of the authors of the books and courses
concerned that it is necessary to throw in a load
of theoretical stuff at the beginning, before
getting on with the more interesting stuff.
While it may indeed be preferable that certain
theoretical foundations are laid before dealing
with systematic issues, the net result is likely to
be that the reader/course-attender can either be
bored to tears or bemused by the abstract
nature of those foundations. Well, here’s the
bad news – we have also decided to begin this
book with some theoretical dimensions. But,
here’s the good news – we utterly reject the false
division between abstract theory and the
substantive issues of everyday life. Indeed, we
believe that our everyday lives are simply
teeming with the kinds of issues and questions
that are often pigeon-holed as theory. Much of
the excitement and value in Human Geography
lies in addressing these issues and questions by
thinking through aspects of our own lives and
of the world(s) in which we live.
As an illustration to get you thinking about
Human Geography in terms of everyday life,
here is a very short account of a typical journey
to work for one of us – Paul Cloke. Neither the
story nor the journey is in any way special; that
is the point of narrating it. It could be any part
of your everyday experience, whoever you are
or wherever you live. What it does show is
that different sets of Human Geography
relationships crop up all over the place, and
certainly not just in the abstract treatments of
theory in books and lectures. So, imagine if you
can a small hillside village in Devon, some 15
miles from the city of Exeter.
The alarm clock does its disturbing work and
off we go. There’s just the two of us now as our
daughter lives in Horfield, Bristol and our son
in Dalston, London. So we still get plenty of
opportunities for city-time with them, but our
home is distinctly rural. Throw open the
curtains and there opening out before us is a
familiar scene, described in a recent chapter on
rural landscape:
My gaze is drawn past landmark trees, across
the tidal estuary of the River Teign, and up
again to the valley side beyond. Rolling
topography and ancient field enclosures –
frequently re-patterned, re-coloured and
re-lit with diurnal and seasonal change – are
intersected by narrow lanes and straggly
footpaths. The ebb and flow of the river
continuously refresh the scene, imposing
alternative senses of time on what can seem
timelessly pastoral. A picture postcard? Yes,
but so much more. This is where we walk
our border collie, Ringo, where I ride my
bike for exercise, where I am periodically
enchanted by the affective capacity of
bluebell woods, of the colour and texture
of birch and rowan, of the persistence
and beauty of goldfinch, blue tit and
woodpecker, yet can remain relatively
unaffected by the scenic presence of the
view, or by the potential for hands-on
PART ONE2
Figure IV Bishopsteignton, south Devon. Source:
Bishopsteignton Village Website
proximity with nature in the performance of
gardening.
(Cloke, 2012: forthcoming)
Alongside its beautiful natural setting,
though, rural life can be a place of tension
and struggle. I struggle with political and
religious conservatism; I struggle with social
monoculturalism; I struggle with the
vehemence of local opposition to new housing
developments, especially from those who
occupy the previous rounds of development.
As I start the day, I reflect that this place that I
call home is gazed on, lived in, performed and
experienced in myriad different ways. The
assemblage of human and non-human actors
displayed out of that window is as diverse in
its meaningful representation as it is it in its
everyday life practices.
Away from the window, our home displays
(consciously and unconsciously) all kinds of
other geographies of connection. Paintings and
photos provide constant reminders of other
places that are precious to us – New Zealand,
Khayelitsha in South Africa, Kenya – and there
are other intentional reminders of ethical
connections close to our heart, of fair trade,
anti-slavery and anti-homelessness campaigns.
And yes, glory of glories, the latest charitable
craze from Cord and Tearfund of toilet
twinning. Our toilet is proudly twinned with a
latrine in Uganda, with a framed photo to mark
the occasion. Charity must be regular . . . but
there are uneasy relationships between private
ethics and their public display. Of course we
don’t recognize other less progressive moral
connections that will be evident to others in
the exploitative relations entombed within our
consumer goods, food miles, commuting and
unsustainable lifestyles. No matter, to the
background sound of music which can
variously be drawn from Australia, Iceland
and the USA as well as Britain, and with the
foreground conversation of international news
on the radio, we speed through breakfast. Food
from all around the world, brought to us by
multinational corporations via supermarkets.
The global and the local come together at
every turn.
Time marches on, so I begin my commute
into Exeter. At first, my journey traverses
farmland through tiny lanes, passing the local
golf course; however early my commute, there
is always earlier activity there. Then through
Halden Forest to Telegraph Hill and on into
the city. Halden represents a place of idyllic
recreation and natural habitat for many, but its
traverse is characterized by the modernism of a
crowded dual-carriageway. In the winter its
local microclimate renders it susceptible to
heavy snowfall and ice which have in the past
trapped unwary drivers for several hours. In
many ways, then, natural, mechanical and
human risk and hazard lie shallow beneath the
surface of this kind of commuter journey. As I
reach its outskirts, the city remains somewhat
detached from the vantage point of the driver’s
seat, partly because of a necessary focus on
traffic management and partly because the
radio tends to fill in much of the ‘thinking
space’ of the journey with national and
international issues. Situated on the River Exe,
Exeter snarls up at key bridging points during
the rush hour, so along with many others I
weave my way through the social geographies
of housing estates and suburban lifescapes to
avoid traffic on the way to the University. In so
doing I bypass the centre of the city with its
designer pubs and clubs, with Irishness here,
and Walkabout there, interspersed with what
are by now unremarkable Indian and Chinese
restaurants. Designer-label beer and wine from
all over the world is spilt here over designer
T-shirts from all over the world. Where I used
to work, in Bristol, the University was located
in the heart of the city, and I would often
encounter the heady contrast of financial
FOUNDATIONS 3
centres and homelessness, side by side on
my journey in. Exeter, however, is a campus
university on the edge of the city, and these
disturbing downtown hybridities are
temporarily avoided by geography. Finally,
it is up to Geography, passing through the
multinational, but somehow overwhelmingly
middle-class, throng of students on campus.
Once inside my office, the first move is to
fetch a cup of (fairly traded) coffee, switch on
the PC and check my e-mails, hardly noticing
the rows of shelves loaded with the production
of particular knowledges about governments,
policies, plans and politics, and how the lives of
real people in real places intersect with so much
in the geographical world.
There is so much else that I could (and perhaps
should) have mentioned, but this much suffices
to invite parallels with many of the themes
covered in this opening section of the book.
Philip Crang, in Chapter 1, discusses the
relations between the global and the local, and
the sights, sounds, histories and commodities of
the global crop up time and again in the local
story of my journey to work. Local places get
their distinctive character from their past and
present connections to the rest of the world,
and therefore we need a global sense of the
local. Conversely, global flows of information,
ideas, money, people and things are routed
into local geographies. We therefore also need
a local sense of the global. Crang’s core message
is that ideas about global and local are not
one-dimensional inputs to our Human
geographical understanding. Rather local and
global are interrelated and each helps to shape
the other.
The same can be said for relations between
society and space. In travelling from home
through villages, suburbs and estates, my
narratives are jam-packed with references to
how and where different social groups live,
work and take their leisure. In Chapter 2,
Jo Little shows how spatial patterns can reflect
social structures, and how spatial processes can
be used as an index of social relations. My
journey seems to traverse particular social areas,
but she warns that social categories cannot
be taken for granted. Such categories are
constructed socially, politically, culturally, and
are mediated by the organization of space; in
other words, society and space are coconstructed.
Moreover, we can no longer rely
on two-dimensional maps of society and space.
Beyond the obvious, there is complexity,
ambiguity and multi-dimensional identity.
Whether in rural communities, spaces of the
night-time economy, or in the hopeful
thirdspaces of liminality and change, society
and space both shape each other, and are
shaped by each other.
Just as local–global and society–space have
seemed like binary terms but have been
investigated by Human Geographers in terms
of their co-dependence, so the relationship
between human and non-human has also come
under scrutiny. As Hayden Lorimer writes in
Chapter 3, geographers have taken a strong
interest in how humans understand and value
the lives of other living creatures, not only in
terms of issues around food and clothing, but
also focusing on the companionship of pets
(such as Ringo the border collie) and the
lifeworlds of ‘wild’ animals (such as the deer
that run free in Halden Forest). In so doing we
have moved away from geographies that focus
only on humans, and instead have emphasized
the relations between humans and non-human
beings, materials and ideas. One significant
outcome of this shift has been an interest in the
appropriate ethical responses that arise from
these inter-relationships.
Part of the intellectual climate that has
allowed Human Geographers to begin to
deconstruct some of these key binary terms
has arrived on the coat-tails of postmodernity.
PART ONE4
Mark Goodwin’s account in Chapter 4 of the
shift from ‘modern’ to ‘postmodern’ charts the
way in which wider society has moved away
from the austere and geometrically planned
patterns of life and thought under modernity
into a more postmodern emphasis on diversity,
plurality and playfulness. Tracing the outcomes
of this shift in terms of architecture, cultural
style and philosophical approach, Goodwin
outlines a transformation in Human
Geography by which many researchers have
begun to reject any kind of search for universal
truth, and instead have recognized that all
knowledge is socially produced. As with other
such categories of knowledge however, the
boundaries between modern and postmodern
are contested, and elements of each are visible
in contemporary cultural and physical
landscapes.
In Chapter 5, Paul Cloke explores the
importance of ‘self’ and ‘other’ in these
contestations over socially produced
knowledge. Being reflexive about the self is a
vital part of understanding how our knowledge
of Human Geographies is situated. Our
experience, politics, spirituality, identities, and
so on, can add to our stories about the world,
and denying their importance in search of
‘objectivity’ could well be dishonest. My
journey to work will not be the same as yours,
even if it follows much the same route.
However, there is also a danger that we only
see the world in terms of ourselves and those
who are the same as us, thus creating categories
of ‘otherness’ according to the essential
characteristics of our selves. What escapes us are
other ‘others’ – those whom we cannot
categorize or pigeonhole; those who surprise us
and cannot be accommodated in our
organization of knowledge.
Gender is a fundamentally important
dimension of how Human Geography can
present understandings of how knowledge
about the world (for example the domestic
world of the household and the employment
world of the academic workplace) is
constructed. Geraldine Pratt and Molly
Kraft, in Chapter 6, discuss how differences
between masculine and feminine ways of
bodily comportment lead to variations
in self-perception and cognitive ability
(especially spatial awareness). So the capacity
to explore and know our environment can be
conditioned, for example, by gendered (as well
as racialized) geographies of fear and safety that
characterize some local places. They argue
that much of women’s experience has long been
ignored by Human Geographers, with the
result that different types of masculinities
have been formative in the production of
geographical knowledge. It is therefore crucial
that we seek to situate knowledge (see Chapter
5) so as both to acknowledge the validity of
a range of perspectives, and to develop a
commitment to communicate across different
perspectives and types of knowledge. In the
context of this chapter situating knowledge
is important not least because gender itself is
interwoven with other social identities that
render it unstable over time and space.
From Chapter 7 onwards, this introductory
section dealing with Foundations turns
specifically to address the diversity in the ways
in which Human Geography is studied and
approached. In Chapter 7, David Gilbert notes
the potentially confusing range of ‘hard’ and
‘soft’ approaches, ranging from scientific
objectivity to having an opinion that counts.
For example, my journey to work could have
been portrayed in terms of time–space data and
cartography rather than as a loose personal
narrative. Alongside the continuing energetic
focus on geographical information systems
(GIS – see Chapter 14), Human Geography
has over recent years mostly emphasized a
critical social scientific approach to the subject,
FOUNDATIONS 5
seeking to deal with issues of agency,
meaningfulness, power and positionality.
In parallel, however, there has also been a
collaboration with the humanities – especially
history, philosophy and literature – to
investigate the importance of the creative
imagination to places using analysis both of
written texts (novels, travel writing and the
like) and visual images (film, television,
photography). Initially the focus here was on
how these texts represented different places and
people, but more recently Human Geographers
have looked to the arts for inspiration about
how we sense and move within the world
in a more non-representational register
(see Chapter 50).
The distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’
approaches to Human Geography is often
influential in how we develop conceptual
frameworks, undertake research and interpret
the findings. It is common to encounter
significant divisions between quantitative and
qualitative approaches – an expression of
Human Geography identity according to
methodological choice rather than substantive
focus or theoretical viewpoint. Rob Kitchin in
Chapter 8 explains that these methodological
divisions of Human Geography identity are
misleading; rather, it should be theory,
philosophy and ideology that shape choices
about methods. While quantitative research
can produce explanation and prediction, and
qualitative research can produce meaning
and understanding, these methodological
approaches should not be regarded as dualistic.
Quantitative approaches fit the assumptions of
some philosophies and qualitative approaches
suit others. However, mixed methods including
both quantification and qualification are often
useful and even advisable.
A key part of the conceptual thinking through
that Human Geographers have to engage in
relates to how the truth of the world is
variously represented in different
circumstances. In Chapter 9, Mike Crang
suggests that the relationship between
representation and reality is more complex
than a binary between truthful or deceptive
depictions of places and people. Different
people and organizations will understand
different places and circumstances differently
– living in a Devon village provokes many
different portrayals, not all of which reflect
idyllic rural life. It follows that all kinds of
representations will contribute to ideas about
and understandings of the world, and will help
to shape the world rather than simply depict it.
Human Geographers need to understand the
selective angles from which representations
are presented, not least because these
representations are often subject to the power
and control of the global political economy,
which increasingly seems to trade on signvalues
rather than ‘truth’.
The nine chapters in this part of the book on
‘Foundations’, then, represent the very stuff of
lively, interpretative, relevant and accessible
Human Geographies. They help us to think
through some of the recurring questions
and issues involved in understanding the
interconnections of people and places, and they
help us to place ourselves in the picture as well.
Far from being the ‘boring theoretical stuff’,
they offer some keys with which to unlock
thoughtful and nuanced accounts of the
Human Geographies of everyday life. Enjoy!
PART ONE6
Introduction
My reasons for becoming a geographer were
not particularly well considered or original,
indeed they were pretty lame in some ways.
Yet they still ring true to me today. I enjoyed
Geography as a subject, and decided to do it for
a degree at university, because through
Geography I got to hear about, see pictures of,
and maybe even go to a lot of different places.
Geographers travel – both literally through an
emphasis on fieldwork and various sorts of
exploration, and more virtually in the form of
slide shows and reportage. Why did I think that
was a good thing? I valued the pleasures of
getting to know particular, distinctive places,
both familiar and unfamiliar. I enjoyed
spending time in a place, getting a feel for it,
finding out about it. A lot of my most powerful
memories and attachments were with places
of various sorts, from the house I grew up in,
to the fields and moors I explored as a
young runner, to the ‘milk bar’ where my
grandmother took me for ice cream treats. But
I also thought it was important to learn about
areas of the world and people of which I would
otherwise be largely ignorant. I was both
moved and discomfited by how much of the
world only came onto my TV screen when
disasters struck, people died, and emergency
problems needed responses. I knew my own life
was parochial in the extreme, and while I
enjoyed its confines, I also wanted to get
beyond them.
Those feelings I had as a seventeen year old still
animate my interest in Geography. I know
much more about the subject now, but I still
think my views then located something very
close to its heart. They home in on a
triumvirate of ideas that have long fostered
Human Geography’s understanding of itself as
a distinctive intellectual endeavour. First, in
the emphasis on the distinctive characters of
particular places, they highlight the idea of the
local. Second, bound up with a desire to
broaden horizons and foster a greater ‘world
awareness’ is the idea of the global. And third,
central to this interest in both the local and
global is an emphasis on difference (between
places and people). This chapter examines the
relations between these three ideas: the local,
the global and difference. It will, I hope, give a
sense of how productive they have been, and
can still be, for geographers. However, it also
argues for critical reflection. Notions of the
local, the global and difference are not as
simple and obvious as they might at first seem.
It is important to think carefully about each of
these ideas, and perhaps even more so about
how they relate to each other. If we fail to do
that, then we run the risk of unwittingly
CHAPTER 1
LOCAL–GLOBAL
Philip Crang
reproducing conventional arguments about our
world’s geographies, closing off other possible
ways of thinking and acting. We may end up
learning rather less about places, their
particularities and their differences than we
should as thoughtful ‘travellers’.
The chapter starts by briefly outlining how and
why ideas of the local and the global have been
so important to Human Geography. I then set
out three takes on local–global relations. I call
these mosaic, system and network.
Local matters, global
visions
Human Geography has long combined
attention to local matters with some sort of
global vision. To start with the local, it, and
associated notions such as place and region,
have long had a particular centrality in
geographical imaginations. Many academic
geographers have spent whole careers trying
to document, understand and explain the
individual ‘personality’ of an area (Dunbar,
1974; Gilbert, 1960). So, why is the local
deemed so important to Human Geography’s
research and teaching? In his thoughtful book
The Betweeness of Place, Nick Entrikin (1991)
argued that geographers have been interested in
the local for three interrelated reasons. First,
they have emphasized the actually existing
variations in economy, society and culture
between places; or what Entrikin terms the
‘empirical significance of place’. Despite the
homogenizing ambitions attributed to the likes
of McDonald’s, everywhere is not the same.
Landscapes vary. Life chances are materially
affected by the lottery of location. Whether you
happen to be born in Lagos or London or Los
Angeles, or indeed in Compton or Beverly
Hills, has an impact on the kind, and even
length, of life you can expect. And location is
not just something we encounter and deal with.
It is part of us. Where we are is part of who we
are. Most obviously, this is the case through
the spatial partitioning of the world into
nationalities, imaginative constructions that
are part of our identities, so powerful as to
get people to kill and die in their name (see
Chapter 37). So, places and the differences
between them can be seen to exist and have
real effects.
But the local also matters in a second way.
Spatial variations do not only exist. They are
valued, or seen as a good thing, not least by
Human Geographers. There is, then, what
Entrikin calls a ‘normative significance to
place’. Sometimes this is expressed as a
celebration of difference: whether out of a
suspicion of the power of global, homogenizing
forces (‘the media’, ‘American multinationals’,
and so on); or out of a pleasure gleaned from
experiencing variety and the unexpected.
Sometimes the local is cherished for its
communal forms of social organization, for
embodying an ideal of small and democratic
organizations (for a critical and suggestive
review see Young, 1990). And sometimes this
social idealization goes hand in hand with
an environmental utopia of self-supporting,
environmentally sustainable livelihoods
(Schumacher, 1973), or at least an appeal to
the local as a way of living more lightly on
the planet, as when calls are made to reduce
‘food miles’ by ‘re-localizing’ supply networks
and supporting local producers. But whether
culturally, socially or environmentally framed,
in all such arguments the local does not just
matter. It matters because it is in some way
‘good’.
The third importance attached to the local
within Human Geography, according to
Entrikin, involves a concern with the impact
of the local on the kinds of understanding or
knowledges that geographers themselves
produce; what he calls the ‘epistemological
PHILIP CRANG8
significance of place’. In part this involves
a scepticism towards general theories that
claim equal applicability everywhere. It also
means a sensitivity to where knowledges come
from (to their ‘situatedness’). Geographers don’t
only know about localities, they produce local
knowledges.
At the same time as having this local fixation,
Human Geography is also determinedly global
in its scope. Even as it values them, it also tries
to break out of purely local knowledges
through appeals to global awareness.
Geographical interest in the global has been
developed through a number of different
emphases. Let me draw out four. Figure
1.1 displays a picture of the world that
represents each.
First, we can identify a geographical concern
with exploration, driven by a desire to ‘know the
world’. Exploration was central to geography’s
LOCAL–GLOBAL 9
Figure 1.1 Four global visions. (a) The conversion of the spherical globe into a flat map is achieved here
through a Mercator projection. Developed in the seventeenth century, the Mercator world map is ideal for
exploration as a constant bearing appears as a straight line, but this is achieved by distorting sizes, which
makes tropical regions look far smaller than they actually are. (b) The Peters projection, by contrast, is an
equal area projection that distorts shape rather than size. First published in 1973, this projection was
designed within development discourse to ensure the ‘South’ was given its proper global importance
© Professor Arno Peters, Oxford Cartographers/Getty Images. (c) ‘Spaceship earth’ is an icon of
contemporary environmentalism, portraying a living whole without apparent national boundaries or
other political divisions. (d) The shrinking earth of ‘globalization’ and telecommunicational hype. Credit:
(a) Royal Geographical Society, UK/www.bridgeman.co.uk; (b) © Oxford Cartographers and Huber
Verlag; (c) NASA; (d) Courtesy of DHL
(a)
(c)
(b)
(d)
early history – such that geography’s
development as a science, from the sixteenth
century onwards, went hand in glove with
European explorations to the farthest corners
of the earth (Driver, 2001; Livingstone, 1992;
Stoddart, 1986). Today, exploration continues
to excite popular cultures of geography,
whether in forms of travel that offer experiences
‘off the beaten track’ (for more, see Chapter 53)
or the mass-circulation National Geographic’s
promotional claim to give American readers a
‘window to the world of exotic peoples and
places’ (cited in Lutz and Collins, 1993: xi).
Second, there is an emphasis on development,
with its hope of ‘improving the world’. Here, a
world vision matters not only in order to rectify
ignorance of the world’s diversity, but also to
explain and act against global inequalities
between North and South. Third, there is
global environmentalism, with its concern for
‘saving the world’ against planetary threats such
as global warming or ozone depletion. Here,
thinking globally is essential not only to
recognize the scale of these problems but also
to understand the true environmental impacts
of our local actions (so, when I set the
thermostat on my central heating I need to be
aware of the impact of my domestic energy use
on CO2
emissions). Finally, there is a concern
with global compression or the ‘shrinking of the
world’ (see Harvey, 1989: 240–307). The
emphasis here is on the increasingly dense
interconnections between people and places on
other sides of the world from each other,
whether through telecommunications, global
flows of money or migrations and other forms
of travel. ‘Globalization’ has become the most
prevalent term to describe such compression
(for a very good overview, see Murray, 2006).
In a globalized world our local lives are led on a
global scale. The food we eat, the clothes we
wear, the television programmes we watch,
the cars we drive or bicycles we ride, all these
materials of our mundane, everyday lives come
to us through enormously complex and globally
extensive production and retail systems.
There are, then, many good reasons why
Human Geography should not myopically
focus on the local but also attend to the global:
because global scale processes impact on, and
result from, our local places and lives; because
thinking globally allows us to compare, and
even more usefully connect, our own lives and
places to those of others; and because the global
stands for important, ‘big’ issues and processes
that we cannot afford to ignore.
My argument, then, is that Human Geography
is characterized by a concern with both the local
and the global. At times, these can be
understood as competing scales of interest: as
when calls are made for geographers to escape
local trivia and address the really important
global issues; or, conversely, when global
accounts are criticized for not paying due
attention to local differences. But, the local and
the global can also be seen as two sides of the
same coin. Travellers set out across the world to
find new ‘locals’ to encounter and report back
on. Environmentalists and multinational
corporations both sloganize about ‘thinking
globally and acting locally’. So, how we
understand and construct the global shapes
our understanding of the local, and vice versa.
PHILIP CRANG10
Figure 1.2 Figures of the local–global: mosaic,
system and network
SYSTEM NETWORKS
GLOBAL
LOCAL 1 LOCAL 2
>(GLOBAL) LOCAL
(LOCAL) GLOBAL
MOSAIC
For the remainder of this chapter I want to turn
more directly to these relations between the
local and the global. They can, I want to
suggest, be thought of in a number of different
ways. To illustrate, I will review three schematic
accounts of local–global relations: the world
as mosaic, the world as system, and the world as
network (see Figure 1.2).
LOCAL–GLOBAL 11
• Human Geography has fashioned itself as a distinctive intellectual endeavour through
emphasizing its interest in local places and specificities, and showing how these matter
empirically, normatively and epistemologically.
• Human Geography has also fashioned itself as a discipline through stressing various global
concerns, for example with exploration, development, global environmental change and
globalization.
• While the local and the global can be seen as alternative and competing scales of
concern, we need to recognize that they are always constructed in relationship to each
other.
SUMMARY
Mosaic
One very popular way of thinking about
Human Geographies is in terms of a mosaic.
Here, the world is conceived as a collection of
local peoples and places, each one being a piece
in a broader global pattern. This way of seeing
the world can be drawn out at a number of
different scales, from neighbourhoods right up
to whole continents. It is perhaps most obvious
at the level of the nation-state. The whole idea
of nationalities depends upon constructing
distinctive pieces of an international mosaic;
establishing borders and territories; and
distinguishing between this country and that
country, our people and those foreigners.
Political maps of the world present this mosaic
cartographically, national pieces set next to each
other and the ‘open’ spaces of the sea. Mosaics
are made too at the smaller scales of the city, in
mappings of a patchwork of local areas, each
characterized by different economies, residents
and built environments. Think, for example,
about how estate agents and others seeking
value in the property market such as retail
location analysts or gentrifiers, map out cities
into areas, neighbourhoods and streets
with supposedly distinctively different
characters. (For more on the use of GIS,
location decision making, and this sort of
mapping, see Chapter 14.)
Move up to the supranational scale, and again
mosaics are a common way of thinking about
the world’s geography. The global is divided
up through reference to the compass points:
South and North, East and West become
designations of geopolitical and cultural entities
when we refer to some people as, for example,
being ‘westerners’. (A classic account of this
way of imagining the world is given in Edward
Said’s book Orientalism, which is about how
‘the West’ or Occident has defined itself
through opposition to ‘the East’ or Orient.
Said, 1995 [originally 1978].) At other times
the mosaic pieces are defined in terms of
latitude, as when the ‘tropics’ designate a part
of the world with supposedly identifiable
characteristics of ‘tropicality’ (Driver and
Martins, 2005; Thompson, 2006). Or it may
be distinctive continental economic, political,
cultural units that are identified and contrasted
in what Lewis and Wigen (1997) call a
‘mythical metageography’: Asia and Asians
framed as different to Europe and Europeans,
North America and North Americans as
different to Africa and Africans, and so on.
These kinds of designations are commonplace,
from geopolitical thought to popular culture.
In many ways, the notion of the geographic
mosaic has been so influential (see Gregory,
1994: 34–46) that it can be hard for us to see
it as anything other than common sense, a
description of an obvious reality. Tourism, the
world’s largest industry, feeds off and actively
constructs such an understanding, as it
showcases a world of different destinations
that the holidaymaker can visit (see Chapter 53
for a fuller discussion). But the mosaic is only
one possible way of framing local–global
geographies and it is a very particular framing,
with its own preoccupations and blind spots.
Three features are especially important. First,
the mosaic puts an emphasis on boundaries and
borders. Geographical difference is seen in
terms of distinct areas that can have lines drawn
around them. Second, these areas are
understood in terms of their unique characters,
personalities or traditions. That is, each piece
of the mosaic is seen as having distinctive
‘contents’, whether that be its people, culture,
economic activities and/or landscape, which
cohere into some sort of unified geographical
identity. Third, this means that any intrusions
PHILIP CRANG12
Figure 1.3 Are global products a threat to local differences? Credit: Anders Ryman/Corbis
into a distinctive area tend to be seen as a threat
to its unique character. For an example one
could think of worries about how the global
predominance of American popular culture,
from fast food to TV programmes, is destroying
local cultures and producing one Americanized
global monoculture, where everybody, wherever
they are, eats Big Macs, drinks Coca-Cola and
watches American soaps (see Peet, 1989). Or
one could think about claims that human
migrations pose problems for the cultural
integrity of receiving areas, overwhelming or in
some way undermining indigenous culture
unless immigrants are properly assimilated
(see Chapter 41 for more on migration).
All these features of the mosaic model can
be questioned evidentially. First, the world’s
differences do not fit into the frame of a
geographical mosaic, no matter how many
scales it is imagined at. The contents of any one
area are never uniformly the same. To claim
they are is to produce what statisticians call
an ‘ecological fallacy’, applying the general,
average qualities of an area to all its inhabitants.
Second, one reason why difference refuses to be
contained within the pieces of a mosaic is that
the world does not stay still. If we think about
the continental ‘metageography’ of people, then
we know that Europeans haven’t stayed in
Europe, Africans haven’t stayed in Africa,
and so on (these population movements are
sometimes called ‘diasporas’; see Chapter 45).
We know that our economies too are
interlinked, with fluid forms of capital able to
migrate around the world (see Chapter 28 on
economic globalization). We cannot simply
draw boundaries around local or national or
continental economies. The world is not a
fixed array of pieces; much of it is mobile, on
the move.
Third, in analyzing the impacts of such
mobilities, we cannot assume that the opening
up of local places to global forces necessarily
results in the destruction of difference.
Instead, global forms are often ‘indigenized’ or
‘localized’ in different ways in different places.
While living and researching in Trinidad the
anthropologist Danny Miller was struck by the
fact that he had to stop his research for an hour
a day while everyone watched the daytime
US soap The Young and the Restless (Miller,
1992). This might seem an obvious sign of
homogenizing Americanization. In fact, Miller
argues, ‘paradoxically an imported soap opera
has become a key instrument for forging a
highly specific sense of Trinidadian culture’
(1992: 165). In the extensive chat about this
soap, what viewers identified was not an alien
American world, to be aspired to or despised,
but themes that resonated with deep existing
structures of Trinidadian experience. In
particular, viewers liked the way it dramatized
what they called ‘bacchanal’, or the confusion
and emergence of hidden truths through
scandals, something also central to other
Trinidadian cultural forms such as Carnival. So,
this globally distributed American soap was not
destructive of Trinidadian difference; as part of
a dynamic local culture it helped to produce a
distinctive Trinidadian sensibility. Elsewhere,
Miller makes similar arguments about both
older global imports – analysing how Coke
became a ‘black sweet drink from Trinidad’
and part of the national drink of rum ‘n’ black
– and newer global forms – reporting on
Trinidadian uses of Facebook (Miller, 1998;
2011). To use a popular local expression,
Miller suggests that all of these global products
are not alien invaders but ‘True True Trini’,
functioning as authentic forms of local cultural
differentiation.
The problems with the figure of the mosaic are
not only factual – they also stem from its
political impulses and ramifications. To be fair,
there are many positive elements to the notion
of the geographical mosaic. Often underlying it
LOCAL–GLOBAL 13
is a desire both to recognize and respect
differences; to appreciate, in both senses of the
word, that everyone is not the same as you are,
and that everywhere is not the same as here.
But it is not enough just to appreciate
difference. We have to think about how the
idea of difference is being constructed and
used. In the case of the mosaic, all too often
either the impulse or the effect is defensive
and exclusionary. Difference is locked into
a geography of territories and borders. It is
framed in terms of insiders and outsiders.
The mosaic also depends on stereotyping. It
understands and recognizes differences by
simplifying them and their location. This way
of seeing the world is not so much a description
of it as a powerful way of claiming and
attributing difference in spatial terms. It
projects differences on to distant people and
places in order to create some sense of unity ‘at
home’; ‘they’ and ‘there’ are different to ‘us’ and
‘here’. It can legitimate claims for a place to
belong to some and not to others. It entangles
geography with a politics of ‘purification’, in
which sameness should be here and difference
should be there. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ would be an
example of practices that have followed the
mosaic and its logic of each different thing in
its own different place to the most brutal
conclusions.
The idea of a world made up of different
geographical areas is commonplace and is
likely, initially, to be seen as both obvious and
non-contentious. However, while not without
its merits – in particular its recognition of
difference – the mosaic is but one way
of thinking about local–global relations, and
it can be deeply problematic because of how it
recognizes difference. We need to think,
then, about whether Human Geography
can combine the local and the global in other
ways too.
PHILIP CRANG14
• A very common way of imagining local–global relations is to envision a world of many
different local places and peoples, each being a piece in a wider Human Geographic
global mosaic.
• This constructs the local as a bounded area, made distinctive through the character of life
and land within it. It also tends to construct global-scale processes as destructive to that local
diversity.
• There are factual problems with this way of framing local–global relations. For example,
local differences are not inevitably destroyed by global level processes; in fact they are
often produced through them.
• There are also political dangers attached to it, in particular an impulse towards
defensiveness and the exclusion of non-locals.
• The mosaic is only one way of imagining local–global relations, so rather than seeing it as
a simple portrait of geographical reality the reasons for, and effects of, its use need to be
analysed.
SUMMARY
System
An alternative way of thinking about
local–global relations is to see local differences
as produced by a global system. That is, the
differences between places are not seen as a
consequence of their internal qualities but as a
result of their location within the wider world.
The mosaic of geographical difference is not
innate but made systemically. We need to
understand the processes and powers that make
it. I have been intimating at this kind of
argument already. We might, for example,
argue that the very idea of a geographical
mosaic is a framework that makes difference,
forming the world through particular
templates. However, perhaps the best examples
of this argument come from within
development studies and through attempts
to understand the extreme differences that
characterize our world.
One way of thinking about the differences
and inequalities in wealth and life chances
between different parts of the world would
be to identify internal characteristics that
explain them. So, we could say (and many do)
that Europe and North America are so
comparatively wealthy because of the economic
innovation they have shown since the time of
the Industrial Revolution or due to longer-term
advantages conferred by temperate climates and
the early adoption of agriculture. And then we
might argue that the Philippines, say, are
comparatively so poor because of their lack of
natural resources, an inhospitable climate
or some perceived deficiencies in their culture
(e.g. endemic corruption or laziness). What this
kind of explanation ignores, though, is the fact
that Europe and the Philippines are not just
separate places, they are places with long
histories of interconnection through world
political, economic and cultural systems. It is
possible, then, that Europe and the Philippines
are so different because of these relationships
with each other rather than because of their
internal qualities. To put it bluntly, maybe
we need to think less about Europe and the
Philippines separately, and rather more about
whether Europe is rich precisely because the
Philippines are poor. That is a very simplistic
assertion but it has its virtues. It sensitizes us to
the idea that there is a set of global relations
between local places. In emphasizing how
global relations actively produce differences
between places it reorients our efforts away
from just documenting diversity (Europe and
the USA are like this, the Philippines are like
that) and towards understanding the processes
of that differentiation.
Central to such efforts of understanding how
and why differences are produced at the
global scale has been work focused on the
world-system. Here the world is treated as
a single economic and social entity. At the
heart of its operations is the capitalist world
economy. This is how Jim Blaut puts it, in
arguing against the idea of a special European
character that has led to its relative economic
success:
Capitalism arose as a world-scale process:
as a world system. Capitalism became
concentrated in Europe because colonialism
gave Europeans the power both to
develop their own society and to prevent
development from occurring elsewhere.
It is this dynamic of development and
underdevelopment which mainly explains
the modern world.
(1993: 206)
A more concrete example may help to show the
importance, and limits, of this systemic view
of local–global relations. That example is the
world coconut market as portrayed by James
Boyce (1992).
Boyce notes two main things about the global
coconut trade in the period 1960–85: first, ‘the
LOCAL–GLOBAL 15
Philippines is king’ with over 50 per cent of
world exports; second, the Filipino producers
of coconuts do not seem to be doing very well
out of this dominant market position.
Understanding either of these facts requires a
global systemic focus. The prevalence of
coconut production in the Philippines would
have to be traced back to Spanish colonization
(for example, a 1642 edict for all ‘indios’ to
plant coconut trees to supply caulk and rigging
for the colonizers’ galleons), to demand in the
nineteenth century from European and North
American soap and margarine manufacturers,
and to US colonial control and post-colonial
patronage in the twentieth century (which led
to preferential tariff rates for Filipino coconut
products in the US market until 1974). It
reflects, then, an emergent international system
in which the Philippines was positioned, by
external powers, as a supplier of an agricultural
commodity, while those powers used that
commodity for their own purposes (for their
ships or their manufacturing industries). Low
rewards for this agricultural production reflect
declining global terms of trade, such that each
barrel of coconut oil exported in 1985 would
buy only half the imports it would have in
1962. The explanation for this decline is
complex, but principally stems from the success
of manufacturers of potential substitutes in the
developed world – both ground nut oil
producers and petro-chemical companies – at
getting subsidies and protection from their
governments, thereby depressing world prices
for all traded fats and oils. That is, it is the
political and economic power of developedworld
producers and governments which means
that the Filipino coconut industry gets an ever
PHILIP CRANG16
Figure 1.4 Why do the Philippines produce coconuts? Credit: Getty Images
worse deal for its efforts. The world trading
system not only differentiates through an
international division of industries (you grow
coconuts, we have petro-chemicals), it
discriminates in relation to the value of these
activities.
However, as well as stressing the global relations
that have stimulated Filipino coconut
production and worsened its terms of trade,
Boyce’s study also suggests some limits to
purely global explanations. In particular, he
stresses how the local trading relationships
within the Philippines meant that while the
majority of small growers reaped little reward,
vast fortunes were made by a few powerful
individuals. Under the guise of concern for
small producers, the Marcos regime reorganized
the industry to concentrate power in the hands
of a single entity that controlled raw material
purchases from farmers and marketing at home
and overseas. This concentration was in turn
used to reward a few close political associates,
such as ‘coconut king’ Eduardo Cojuangco and
the Defence Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, who
siphoned off much of the dwindling national
earnings from the coconut trade. Thus, existing
inequalities in economic and political power
within the Philippines allowed actions that
made these inequalities greater still. Declining
global terms of trade were experienced
particularly severely and responded to in
particularly unproductive ways, because of the
distinctive (if not unique) political system in
the Philippines. Local processes, as well as
global processes, played their part in the
impoverishment of coconut producers. Any
attempt to rectify that impoverishment would
have to deal with local and global trading
relations and the political–economic structures
of each.
The example of the Philippines and coconut
trade illustrates how the differences between
places cannot simply be understood through
comparison. Differences are made through
relations between places, as well as within
them. In this section, I have used the notion
of the ‘system’ to capture this emphasis on
global interrelations, local agencies and their
production of geographical differences. That
kind of argument is well developed in accounts
of the global differences associated with
development and underdevelopment, but can
be applied more generally too.
LOCAL–GLOBAL 17
• Differences between places are not just the result of their ‘internal’ characteristics. They are
produced by systems of global relations between places.
• Human Geography should therefore do more than document diversity. It should investigate
the processes of differentiation through which diversity and inequality are produced.
• These processes of differentiation operate at both global and local scales.
SUMMARY
Networks
So far we have seen two differing ways to think
about the relations between the global and
local. In the model of the mosaic, the global is
portrayed as a collection of smaller locals. In the
model of the system, the global is portrayed as a
set of relations through which local differences
are produced, and the emphasis is less on
collection and comparison than on connection.
In this final section I want to take the idea of
connection further. I want to suggest that we
can see both the local and the global as made up
of sets of connections and disconnections that
we can call ‘networks’. In consequence, we may
need to view the local and the global not as
different scales (small and large) but as two ways
of approaching these networks, in which the
local is global and the global is local.
Let’s start by looking at the local (and its global
character). In highly influential arguments, the
British Geographer Doreen Massey coined the
phrase ‘a global sense of place’ to reference how
the distinctiveness of a particular place is not
threatened by connections to the wider world
but actually comes from them (Massey, 1991,
1994). Whether thinking about a metropolitan
urban neighbourhood or a seemingly isolated
rural village, Massey argued that localities gain
their different, specific characters through
distinctive historical and contemporary links to
other places (see Case Study box). This also
produces a more ‘progressive’ politics of place,
in which the appreciation of local differences
does not slip into a reactionary, defensive
parochialism. Massey has since developed this
argument within her book For Space (2005), a
wider theorization of how Human Geography
approaches core concepts such as space and
place. Places for her are less ‘things’ (such as
pieces in a geographical mosaic, to use my
phrasing from this chapter) than they are
‘ever-shifting constellations of trajectories’
(Massey, 2005: 151). Places are less containers
of different and distinctive contents than they
are ‘open and internally multiple’; less fixed,
more of an ‘event’, a ‘coming together of the
previously unrelated’ (Massey, 2005: 141, 138).
If we think of the world in terms of networks,
then we see local places as gaining their
different characters through their distinctive
patterns of associations with other places. In
turn, we begin to see how the global is less
some neat, all-embracing system with a single
logic, than a mass of globally extensive yet
locally routed practices and technologies of
connection. Not only do we need to globalize
the local, but we also need to localize the
global, understanding the global as something
other than a single entity or system.
Writing in the context of debates over
globalization, Arjun Appadurai (1990) provides
a classic early intimation of such an approach.
He argues that we can imagine the global
as comprised of a range of interacting but
distinctive ‘-scapes’ or morphologies of flow
and movement. ‘Finanscapes’ comprise global
networks and flows of money (often in
electronic and virtual forms, routed through
the casino economies of major international
financial centres in New York, Hong Kong,
Tokyo and London). ‘Ethnoscapes’ are forged
by global networks and flows of people
(migrants, tourists, business travellers, even
geographers), each with their own rather
different patterns of movement. ‘Mediascapes’
are made up of communication technologies
and product distributions. And so on. Many
flows, many networks, often interconnected but
possessing their own distinct geographies. So,
for example, money moves across national
borders with ease at the same time as the richest
nations look to reinforce their disciplining of
the movements of people cast as ‘economic
migrants’. Appadurai argues for breaking down
PHILIP CRANG18
the idea of the global into these different kinds
of flows, and for seeing how those flows then
come together (and sometimes clash) as the
trajectories producing different places.
At least two influential broader approaches
relate to such concerns for localizing the global
and globalizing the local. The first has been
called the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ (Sheller
and Urry, 2006). In opposition to the static
mapping of the world implied by the notion of
a geographical mosaic, this approach
emphasizes how the world is made through the
interrelated mobilities of people, things and
ideas. At its heart are explorations of the
dialectics between fixity and fluidity. (Chapters
52–54 give much more information on this
approach and examples of how it has been
applied within Human Geography.) The
second approach is most commonly called
Actor-Network Theory (or ANT for short). As
John Law puts it, ANT ‘treat[s] everything in
the social and natural worlds as a continuously
generated effect of the webs of relations within
which they are located’ (Law, 2009: 141).
Despite its name, ANT is less an explanatory
theory than it is ‘a toolkit for telling interesting
stories about, and interfering in, those relations’
and how they manage to ‘assemble or don’t’
(Law, 2009: 141–2). ANT has been widely
influential within Human Geography, but for
our purposes here it is most important for how
it emphasizes both ‘localizing the global’ and
‘redistributing the local’, to quote one of its
LOCAL–GLOBAL 19
Doreen Massey on the global–local geographies of
Kilburn, London and a Cambridgeshire village
Take a walk down Kilburn High Road, my local shopping centre. It is a pretty ordinary place,
north-west of the centre of London. Under the railway bridge the newspaper stand sells papers
from every county of what my neighbours, many of whom come from there, still often call the
Irish Free State . . . Thread your way through the often stationary traffic . . . and there’s a shop
which as long as I can remember has displayed saris in the window . . . On the door a notice
announces a forthcoming concert at Wembley Arena: Anand Miland presents Rekha, live, with
Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Jahi Chawla and Raveena Tandon . . . This is just the beginnings
of a sketch from immediate impressions but a proper analysis could be done, of the links
between Kilburn and the world . . . It is (or ought to be) impossible even to begin thinking
about Kilburn High Road without bringing into play half the world and a considerable amount
of British imperialist history.
(Massey 1991: 28)
Think of the [seemingly isolated] Cambridgeshire village. Quite apart from its more recent
history, integrated into a rich agricultural trade, it stands in an area which in its ancient past
has been invaded by Celts and Belgae, which was part of a Roman Empire which stretched
from Hadrian’s Wall to Carthage . . . The village church itself links this quiet place into a
religion which had its birth in the Middle East, and arrived here via Rome.
(Massey 1995: 64)
CASE STUDY
principal advocates, Bruno Latour (2005: 173,
193). Contesting the idea that the global is a
larger system within which local events must be
contextualized, ANT proposes a much ‘flatter’
way of seeing the world, in which ‘movements
and displacements come first, places and shapes
second’ (Latour, 2005: 204). Rather than
focusing on something like global capitalism,
ANT advocates studying particular sites, such
as Wall Street dealing rooms, tracing out how
they become ‘global’ through the density and
reach of the connections that they have to other
sites. Like Massey, advocates of ANT also
contest ideas of places being self-contained and
bounded, instead looking to document how
‘what is acting at the same moment in any one
place is coming from many other places, many
distant materials, many faraway actors’ (Latour,
2005: 200). Both the local and the global are
imagined as having ‘networky shapes’
comprising ‘the intersections of many trails’
(Latour, 2005: 204).
ANT has its own distinctive lexicon for
describing these networky shapes and how they
operate which, to be frank, can be slightly offputting
for the uninitiated. So, to illustrate the
network approach I want to take a more
accessible example: Ian Cook’s work on the
networked geographies of tropical fruits
(2000; 2004). You are perhaps most likely to
encounter the bananas and papaya he writes
about on a supermarket aisle or in a fruit bowl
in your house. Cook’s interest is in part in the
connections these fruit enact, linking as they do
farm workers and farmers in the tropics (his
own research focuses on the Caribbean),
supermarket and fruit company technicians,
managers and marketing people, and ‘first
world’ consumers. When you eat a banana
you become directly connected into a host of
networks, obviously including those related to
the production and retailing of the banana itself
but also spreading out in multiple directions
(the production of fertilizer for Caribbean
farmers, the ships and planes that cross the
Atlantic, the banking systems that allow
payments to be made, the plastics in which the
fruit are packaged, and so on). For Cook, these
fruit represent geographies that cannot be
contained in mosaic-like distinctions of here
and there: both because of their individual
travels from Caribbean farms to British or
American mouths, and through their much
longer implication in processes of botanical,
economic and cultural exchange and their
wider status as ‘fruits of empire’ (Walvin,
1996).
But Cook is also interested in the
disconnections these fruit networks enact.
These fruit change status and meaning as they
‘travel’: changing from plants to be tended for
a wage, to ‘exotic’ fruit, to domestic treats.
Cognitive and emotional distances are made
between the people and places that have these
fruit in common. The Caribbean farm worker
knows the papaya or banana eater only as ‘the
consumer’ who dictates market pressures of
demand. The banana or papaya eater knows the
farm worker only as an invisible producer or as
a vague stereotype, whether that be the smiling
Caribbean labourer or the oppressed third
world worker.
PHILIP CRANG20
Figure 1.5 Not just a fruit bowl but networks of
connections to many other places and actors.
Credit: iStockphotos
‘Following’ tropical fruit is just one way to
access a world comprising multi-directional,
multi-fibred networks, the geographies of
which are not mappable on to neat territories
or overarching systems. Faced with such
networks, the task of Human Geography
becomes not to produce knowledge of
either the Caribbean or the UK, nor just to
explain their differences through understanding
global systems, but to explore the networks
of connection and disconnection that bring
these places and their differences into
being.
LOCAL–GLOBAL 21
• Local places get their distinctive characters from their past and present links to the rest of the
world. In consequence, we need a ‘global sense of the local’.
• Global networks – with their flows of information, ideas, money, people and things – have
locally routed geographies. In consequence, we need ‘localized senses of the global’.
• Wider literatures on ‘mobilities’ and ‘Actor-Network Theory’ have informed recent attempts
to map out ‘networky’ geographies that both ‘localize the global’ and ‘redistribute the local’.
SUMMARY
Conclusion
Human Geography is rightly interested in both
the local – the specific place, with its distinctive
qualities – and the global: the wider world,
with its bigger picture. A crucial question that
has always faced Human Geography is how to
conceptualize the relations between these two.
Three general arguments have informed the
discussion here. First, that appeals to ideas of
diversity – a global collection of many locals –
may be problematic: factually, politically and
conceptually. Second, that rather than diversity
the conceptual keystone of geographical work
in this area should be ‘differentiation’ – that is,
an investigation of the ongoing productions of
differences between peoples and places. Third,
it is debatable whether these processes of
differentiation accord to singular global logics
(such as ‘developed countries make other
countries underdeveloped as part of their own
development’). Rather, they may operate
through the multiple networks that constitute
both the local and the global. Tracing out these
networks offers a particularly fruitful way of
theorizing and studying local–global
geographies.
1. Why might you, as a Human Geographer, be interested in ‘the local’ and ‘the global’?
2. What are the strengths and weaknesses of seeing the world as made up of a mosaic of
diverse places and peoples?
DISCUSSION POINTS
PHILIP CRANG22
3. Why are some places, like the USA, so rich and other places, like the Philippines, so poor?
4. What does it mean to say the local and the global have ‘networky shapes’?
5. Debate the relative merits of the ‘mosaic’, ‘system’ and ‘network’ models.
Blaut, J.M. (1993) The myth of the European miracle & after 1492. In: The Colonizer’s Model of the
World. New York: The Guilford Press, 50–151 and 179–213.
It is worth attempting a read of this for its powerful restatement of a world-systemic approach. It is
particularly strong on debunking the idea that European ‘development’ stems from qualities internal to
Europe itself.
Connell, J. and Gibson, C. (2003) Sound Tracks. Popular Music, Identity and Place. London: Routledge.
This is a book that surveys the geographies of popular music, exploring how they combine economic,
cultural and political dynamics. I suggest it here because its approach is explicitly framed around seeing
the geographies of music as simultaneously global and local, so it provides a great case study if you
want to get a sense of how those dual emphases of Human Geography can be combined in practice.
Chapter 1, called ‘Into the music’, sets out the book’s approach in terms of a dialectic between fixity and
fluidity.
Massey, D. (1994 [orig. 1991]) A global sense of place. In: Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge:
Polity Press, 146–56.
Massey, D. (2005) The elusiveness of place. In: For Space. London: Sage, 130–42.
Doreen Massey is perhaps Human Geography’s leading writer on issues of the local and the global.
‘A global sense of place’ is a classic essay. There are lots of ideas in it about globalizing the local and
localizing the global and it is very accessible. The other extract suggested here is from Massey’s later
book For Space, and it provides a more explicitly conceptual elaboration of the thinking that underlies the
notion of a global sense of place. They make a good pairing for getting into Massey’s ideas.
Murray, W.E. (2006) Geographies of Globalization. Abingdon: Routledge.
An excellent textbook that both considers the implications of globalization for the practice of Human
Geography and surveys the discipline’s contributions to globalization debates.
FURTHER READING
Introduction
At the heart of Human Geography lie
questions about the relationship between
social characteristics and places. How do the
differences between groups and individuals
within society map on to, reflect and reinforce
spatial categories? Do the qualities of different
places affect how society uses, enjoys and
even accesses those places? And perhaps
more challengingly – why do some social
characteristics seem to have a much stronger
relationship with place than others?
Geographers have recognized the relevance
of these questions across a range of scales from
the global to the local and paying attention
to them has shaped not only the content of
what we study as Human Geographers but
also the methodologies through which we
conduct our research. While we may have
long agreed that Human Geography is about
this central relationship between space and
place, how we have chosen to study it has been
the subject of much more variation and debate.
In this chapter I will chart the development
of Human Geographers’ thinking on the
relationship between society and space within
the discipline, identifying three main ‘phases’
in the progression from spatial determination
to the co-construction of people and place. The
chapter will then go on to explore a series of
examples in which we see clearly how space and
society are inter-dependent and how the ways
in which we think about and organize space are
fundamental to the experiences of those who
occupy, access and are excluded from certain
spaces. The examples selected are not unique or
even unusual. They speak of everyday situations
and lives and are drawn from mainstream
geographical topics, underlining the centrality
of the relationship between society and space to
the whole of Human Geography.
Three phases in the
development of
geographers’ work
on society and space
The three phases that will be discussed are
spatial order and the mapping of social
characteristics; society, space and power; and
the co-construction of society and space.
Spatial order and the mapping
of social characteristics
While both geographers and sociologists
have questioned the ways in which space has
CHAPTER 2
SOCIETY–SPACE
Jo Little
influenced social processes since the latter part
of the nineteenth century, more sustained
attempts to conceptualize the interaction
between society and space are traditionally seen
as emerging in the 1960s in the form of urban
ecology. A concern with measuring and
predicting the spatial ordering of human
behaviour dominated Human Geography
in what became known as the quantitative
revolution. Much has been written of the
influence of this phase in the development of
geography and of the emphasis placed on the
identification of scientific laws to explain
the spatial organization of human behaviour
(see Johnston, 1991). Here it is important to
appreciate the ways in which this scientific
approach resulted in the classification of social
characteristics and a belief that understanding
socio-spatial relations emerged through the
systematic and often very detailed mapping of
key population variables.
Social geography was dominated by the idea
of social segregation, showing, through the
mapping of characteristics such as race, income,
housing occupation and how different social
groups were clustered in, for example, different
residential areas (see Peach, 1975). This was a
form of social area analysis which thrived on
the development of computer mapping
techniques and on the growing availability of
forms of population data such as census and
labour market statistics. This kind of geography
became increasingly criticized, however, for
being more concerned with the organization of
social patterns than with their explanation and
for a view of space that assumed neat, fixed
and objective social ordering. In addition, it
became clear that social area analysis only
really included certain social characteristics
(those easily mapped and traditionally seen as
important), neglecting many that were less easy
to study (e.g. sexuality).
Society, space and power
The key criticism levelled at social area analysis
– that it failed to take account of power
relations within society and of the ways in
which such power relations underpinned the
organization of space – became a central
concern of Human Geography from the 1980s.
Geographers turned to radical approaches,
most notably Marxist approaches, to show
how space was a product of social forces
and to explain the processes whereby identity
and difference was reflected in patterns of
spatial inequality. This development in the
conceptualization of socio-spatial relations was
particularly significant in research on economic
restructuring in the UK and the USA in the
1980s. It provided a new understanding of the
spatial distribution of wealth and jobs across
regions, countries and even globally, and of the
social outcomes of the uneven development of
resources. It also showed, as Massey (1994)
asserted, the relevance of geography to political
debate about inequality. Later, concerns grew
about the assumed dominance of class within
radical approaches to the study of society and
space. Feminist geographers, in particular,
argued that they were failing to recognize the
differing experience of men and women and
were thus blind to the gendered nature of the
relationship between society and space (Bowlby
et al., 1989; McDowell, 1983). Such concerns
gave rise to a number of geographical studies
of the varying employment experiences of
men and women within regions, communities
and households (McDowell and Massey,
1984). Work showed how women were often
disadvantaged within the labour market and,
because of different roles and responsibilities,
not able to make the same employment choices
as men. Geographers argued, as a result of
such work, that the spatial division of labour
resulting from economic restructuring reflected
not only class but other social characteristics
JO LITTLE24
such as gender and race and should be
understood as an often complex interplay of
social patterns.
As a result of such studies, recognition of the
different ways in which social characteristics
played out over space led to a richer and more
nuanced geography. It was still a geography,
however, in which places were seen to reflect the
social characteristics of those who occupied
them. Geographers had got much better at
showing the subtleties and shifts in the
relationship between people and places; they
had demonstrated how different theoretical
positions gave visibility to particular groups and
highlighted different kinds of inequalities, yet
space, even across these varying perspectives,
remained effectively a container for social
difference. While progress had certainly been
made in moving away from a kind of spatial
determinism in which spatial difference caused
social inequality, there was still, at this time,
little recognition of the interaction between the
spatial and the social.
The co-construction of
society and space
Developments in geography in the 1990s
saw major shifts in the ways in which the
relationship between society and space was
understood. Engagement with postmodernism
and the associated ‘cultural turn’ in geography
were highly significant in challenging the
conceptualization of both people and place in
two key respects. The first was the new
sensitivity to the variations between human
beings in relation to characteristics such as
gender, race, class, age, (dis)ability, etc., and to
the differing experiences people have of space
– what is termed ‘spatial differentiation’. The
recognition of difference questioned the ‘taken
for granted’ nature of social groupings and of
peoples’ varying experiences of broad social
categories such as gender and age. Central to
this recognition was an acceptance of categories
as socially constructed and not fixed, and
consequently open to contestation, resistance
and negotiation. At this time a major area of
social geographical research focusing on
identity became firmly established, notably in
respect to the marginalization of certain groups
and individuals from particular spaces and
places (this issue is developed further in
Chapter 42).
The second area of work that emerged from
the development of geographical thinking
during the 1990s related to space and to its
conceptualization as constructed. It became
increasingly asserted that
just as social identities [were] no longer
regarded as fixed categories but . . .
understood as multiple, contested and
fluid, so too space [was] no longer
understood as having particular fixed
characteristics.
(Valentine, 2001: 4)
Critically, space started to be understood not
as a simple backdrop against which difference
and inequality played out, but an active part
of the construction of society and of the
experiences of people within those places.
Space, it was argued, could not be factored out
(or in) to the operation of social relations and
practices – it was a central part of how those
relations were produced and reproduced.
Geographers thus began to talk of society and
space as mutually constituted and apparent in
ways that were never fixed but always in the
process of becoming.
These three phases in geographers’ study of the
relationship between society and space are
summarised in Table 2.1 below.
SOCIETY–SPACE 25
JO LITTLE26
Key phases in the
conceptualization
of socio-spatial
relations
The scope and
direction of research
Research content Criticisms
Spatial order
and the mapping
of social
characteristics
Social geography was
dominated by the idea
of social segregation,
showing, through the
mapping of
characteristics such as
race, income and
housing occupation,
how different social
groups were clustered
in, for example,
different residential
areas
Computer mapping
techniques aided by the
growing availability of
forms of population
data such as census
and labour market
statistics (see Johnston,
1991; Peach, 1975)
More concerned with
the organization of
social patterns than
with their explanation.
Belief that space was
passive and assumed
neat, fixed and
objective social
ordering
Society, space
and power
relations
Radical approaches,
most notably Marxist,
to show how space
was a product of
social forces and to
explain the processes
whereby identity and
difference was
reflected in patterns of
spatial inequality
Research on economic
restructuring and
uneven development,
often at the regional
scale (see Massey,
1994)
Assumed dominance
of class within radical
approaches; failed to
recognize gendered
and racial
characteristics (Bowlby
et al., 1989;
McDowell and
Massey, 1984)
The coconstruction
of
society and space
A sensitivity to
difference and hybrid
identities and to the
multiple, fluid and
contested nature of
both social
characteristics and
space
Poststructural and
postmodern
approaches and a
focus on performance
(see Panelli, 2004)
Mitigates against the
recognition of broader
patterns of
disadvantage and may
be difficult to mobilize
politically
Table 2.1 Phases in the study of the relationship between society and space
Will we now discuss in more detail, and
through the use of examples, how the
relationship between society and space has
come to be understood by geographers as coconstructed.
That is, how space evolves to reflect
and to shape the identities of those who use it
and how the imagining of space in particular
ways can act to exclude some and protect
others.
Place and the social
construction of space
Tim Cresswell (1996) used the notion of in
place/out of place to explore how space
becomes imbued with certain social and
cultural values and assumptions. These values
and assumptions drive ideas about which
identities and behaviours we might deem to be
appropriate and comfortable (in place) in those
spaces and which we might see as inappropriate
(out of place). These ideas may shift over time
– they may, as we shall see later, be contested,
but they are often powerful and hard to resist.
They help to show how social and cultural
characteristics are translated from society more
broadly to the day-to-day experiences of
particular people in particular places. The idea
that space is an active agent in the ways in
which social relations evolve and play out is
now fundamental to geographical study. Not
only does ‘space matter’ but indeed space is
part of the very organization and operation of
society. We can turn to research from almost
every area of Human Geography to illustrate
the relevance of the construction of space itself
to our experience of place and performance of
identity.
The rural community
The rural community provides a rich
illustration of the ways in which our imagining
and understanding of the spaces of the
rural plays through the characteristics
and organization of rural society and the
day-to-day ways in which people live their lives.
Geographers researching rural communities and
lifestyles have recognized the power of takenfor-granted
assumptions about rurality. In
recent years, they have argued that any attempt
to understand the nature of rural society must
acknowledge and incorporate a set of timeless
qualities associated with the countryside –
SOCIETY–SPACE 27
• Conventional approaches in the geographical study of the relationship between society and
space were characterized by an initial concern to map the ways in which places were
socially differentiated. Such mapping exercises were seen as useful to policy makers but
provided only a very narrow view of people’s experience of space and place.
• Geographers argued that understandings of society and space needed to take into account
the inequalities and power relations reflected in social patterns and, in particular, the
uneven development of the economy and unequal access to wealth.
• There was a recognition following the cultural turn in geography and the influence of
postmodernism on the role of space in the construction of social difference. Geographers
became interested in what was termed the co-construction of society and space.
SUMMARY
qualities such as the strength of the community,
the slower pace of life and the closeness to
nature. All of these ‘rural imaginaries’ will, it is
asserted, underpin and inform the nature of
both individual identity and the more general
operation of the rural community.
The idea that rural social spaces are
characterized by a more authentic and active
sense of community is one such imaginary that
has held an important place in academic
writing and popular culture (Cloke, 2003).
A uniquely rural way of ‘doing’ community
is seen as so key to the formation and
reproduction of rural society that it needs to
be written into understandings of rural places
and to the histories, attitudes and experiences
of rural people. Constructions of rural
community, as witnessed in many geographical
studies (see Bell, M., 1994; Halfacree and
Rivera, 2012) have proved a very strong ‘pull
factor’ in people’s decisions to migrate to rural
areas in the UK and other Western countries
and consequently highly relevant to the process
of counter-urbanization (see Figure 2.1). Such
strong expectations of community can prove a
powerful force in mediating behaviour and
identities of those living in rural areas – they
may be more inclined to participate in
community events to provide help and
assistance to fellow villagers – and by doing so
to fit in with the expectations of village life.
In my research on rural women in south-west
England in the 1990s, I talked to many women
who valued the ‘sense of community’ that
existed in the village (Little and Austin, 1996).
This community spirit, they believed, was not
something they had experienced in previous
(urban) places of residence. It ensured people
‘looked out for one another’ and that the
elderly and vulnerable, in particular, were
JO LITTLE28
Figure 2.1 A traditional view of ‘rural life’. Credit: www.CartoonStock.com
... LUNCH ,
Tea, dinner
AUD
supper
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Homemade j a m
FOR
BREAKFAST
not neglected. This is an example of the
co-construction of society and space – the
space of the rural community was socially
constructed in line with past understandings
and associated contemporary behaviour to be a
place of friendship and cooperation. This, in
itself, helped to shape behaviour and encourage
villagers in caring and acts of mutual support.
The women’s identities as rural people, it
seemed, had responded to the ways in which
they felt village space to be constructed.
In a more negative reading of the notion of the
rural community, other studies have drawn
attention to those who do not fit (see Figure
2.2). They illustrate how the social construction
of rurality in the UK in particular, is a very
‘white’ construction, appealing often to
traditional ideas of Englishness (see Neal
and Agyman, 2006). This construction sees
black and ethnic minority rural residents (or
would-be residents) and visitors as ‘out of place’
within such communities. This construction of
rural community can support racist behaviour,
as has been shown through studies of the
experiences of black people and the attitudes of
white residents (see Hubbard, 2004; Jay, 1992).
The night time economy
The urban night time economy provides us
with another example of the relationship
between space and society, which again shows
the co-construction of place and identity as
well as its fluid and contested nature.
Geographers have been interested in the
development of the entertainment industry, as
an element of the night time economy, from a
number of different angles and have looked at
its role in regenerating flagging city centres and
providing jobs where previous economies have
SOCIETY–SPACE 29
Figure 2.2 Black and ethnic minority people are sometimes regarded as ‘out of place’ in rural and coastal
spaces, even as visitors. Credit: Peter Lomas/Rex Features
declined (Bell, D., 2007; Chatterton and
Hollands, 2002). They have also been
concerned with the associated social changes
to the city and how we use and feel about
these spaces. This has, inevitably, included
contemporary concerns about the behaviour of
those using urban entertainment spaces and,
in particular, how city centres have become
constructed as exclusionary spaces, dominated
by a very strong drinking culture (particularly
in the UK) and in which only certain groups
and identities are comfortable (Royal
Geographical Society, 2012; Jayne et al., 2006).
Displays of aggressive and drunken behaviour
have been identified in both academic and
popular reports as responsible for transforming
the atmosphere of the city centre at night
and making it, for some, a place of fear. The
following passage from the Observer newspaper
describes how the concentration of ‘drinking
spaces’ has led to violence in a particular part of
the centre of the Welsh city Cardiff.
In the shadow of Cardiff’s castle, dozens of
bars and clubs have gained the Welsh capital
its reputation as a party city. They line the
roads through the city centre to St Mary
Street, a pedestrianised zone lined with pubs
of all types and chains. As an ambulance
flashes by, three men are arguing loudly about
where to go next. The level of aggression rises
until one stomps off swearing loudly at the
other two, who throw something at his back
which smashes into the gutter.
(McVeigh, Observer, 25 March 2012)
The expansion of vertical drinking spaces
(as they have become known) in Cardiff and
many other cities means that, for part of the
day, these spaces are effectively ‘no go areas’ for
anyone but those participating in the night
time entertainment. Moreover, the
normalization of aggressive and drunken
behaviour is seen to reinforce the drinking
culture. While clearly space does not cause
violence, the enduring presence of aggression
and the exclusion of other users of the space
helps to cement the relationship between city
centre space and drinking.
Some studies of this relationship between city
centres and aggressive and alcohol-fuelled
behaviour have argued that it has reinforced
both spaces and associated identities as
masculine (Figure 2.3).
The laddish culture generated in the drinking
spaces (see Hubbard, 2009) – an element
of which is the increasing presence of
entertainment venues that objectify women
(such as lap dancing and pole dancing clubs) –
creates an atmosphere in which some women
feel out of place, excluded and even fearful.
While the particular problem of today’s city
centre drinking spaces is relatively recent, the
wider issue surrounding the ways in which
some environments are experienced as
dangerous or scary is not new. Over many
years geographers have noted how public
space is frequently viewed as dangerous or
unwelcoming by women. Charting that
research illustrates the different approaches that
were introduced at the start of the chapter. So,
during the 1980s the study of women’s fear in
public spaces was widely seen as a failure of
planning and of the design of buildings and
spaces – dangerous spaces were believed to be
the outcome of a development process that
ignored the particular needs of women and
created bleak and functional public spaces
(Little, 1994). Later, geographers argued
that such ideas were overly environmentally
determinist and through the adoption of
more radical approaches sought to explain
fear within public space in relation to
broader understandings of women’s feelings
of vulnerability within patriarchal or
male-dominated societies. More recently,
however, with the interest in spaces as socially
constructed, fear has been seen as the outcome
JO LITTLE30
of socio-spatial relations and the performance
of identity in place. This emphasis on the
interdependence of identity and place has
helped in understanding the more nuanced and
complex relationship between the aggressive
spaces of the night time economy and the
performance of gender – particularly the
different and very fluid circumstances under
which both men and women experience such
spaces as dangerous and threatening (Pain,
1997; Kern, 2005; Wesely and Gaarder, 2004).
Thirdspace
Throughout this chapter, examples from across
Human Geography have been used to explore
the interaction between society and space. They
have shown how different ways of approaching
the relationship between people and place can
inform the understanding of this interaction
and how geography has moved from simply
mapping social characteristics in space to seeing
space as bound up in how those characteristics
are distributed and performed. We have seen
that identities may become excluded from
spaces to which they do not belong and also
how space itself can take on particular qualities
through the presence or absence of different
identities. What is very important to stress
about these socio-spatial interactions is their
variability and fluidity. They are not fixed but
made and re-made and while some
relationships between society and space may be
acknowledged, like the rural community, to be
a product of historic associations, they are still
constantly being negotiated and performed.
It is this negotiation that needs particular
emphasis in this final section of the chapter.
SOCIETY–SPACE 31
Figure 2.3 Evening drinking in city centres may often appear aggressive. Credit: Paul Panayiotou/Alamy
While dominant constructions of space may be
powerful, as the examples have shown, they
may also be contested. Indeed, writing in the
mid-1990s, Ed Soja (1996: 2) urged scholars to
‘think differently’ about the construction and
lived experience of space. He argued that both
practical and theoretical understandings of
space and spatiality were in danger of being
muddled by ‘the baggage of tradition [and]
by older definitions that no longer fit
changing contexts’. Soja’s concerns about
the conceptualization of socio-spatial relations
found momentum in a developing critique of
geographers’ thinking about space, and in
particular, their use of dualisms such as
inside/outside, home/work, belonging/
excluded, white/black, public/private, etc.
Such dualisms, it was argued, suggest the
world can be understood as clear-cut,
oppositional categories and that, used by
geographers, these categories appeared to map
onto space in straightforward and stable ways.
Challenges to the use of these dichotomies
came in particular from post-colonial and
feminist research in geography. Such research
questioned the construction of knowledge,
arguing the need to contest and destabilize
the privileging of what were seen as western,
masculine forms of knowledge, and to develop
alternative approaches which recognized the
varying and hybrid nature of identity and
experience. Research demonstrated that
traditional forms of identity were increasingly
being reshaped in response to social, cultural
and political change and that any attempt to
understand people’s lives needed to appreciate
the complex and sometimes contradictory
reworking of identity. Critically, the reworking
of identity was seen to produce an alternative
spatiality, ‘a thirdspace’ as Soja puts it, in
which there was an opportunity to think and
act politically and a responsibility to creatively
re-think and re-theorize spatiality in
conjunction with multiple forms of identity.
Soja (1996: 6) briefly states what thirdspace
provides that takes us beyond other
conceptualizations of space as follows:
Thirdspace can be described as a creative
recombination and extension, one that
builds on a Firstspace perspective that is
focused on the ‘real’ material world and a
Secondspace perspective that interprets this
reality through ‘imagined’ representations
of spatiality.
(Soja, 1996: 6)
In exploring the potential of thirdspace, Soja
(1996) draws extensively on the work of bell
hooks, the American academic and activist, and
on her writing about the home and community
as a space of nurture and resistance as well as
oppression. hooks, Soja (1996: 13) suggests,
is able to illustrate the ‘radical openness’
of thirdspace to the creation of alternative
spatial imaginaries by those who wish to
‘reclaim’ spaces of oppression and make
them into something else. Writing as a black,
feminist activist, hooks (1990) talks in her
book Yearning of the marginalization of
African-American subjectivities and their place
on the periphery of American political and
intellectual life. According to hooks, this
marginality can be used to provide a space,
simultaneously material and symbolic, from
which to challenge the dominant power of the
mainstream and give voice to the ideas, beliefs
and experiences of the silent ‘other’.
The important thing for our discussion here
is the notion of thirdspace as the spatialized
expression of oppression and political action.
It takes the experience of marginality and turns
it into a space of resistance. Soja notes how
the use of marginality in this sense as a form
of resistance evokes the work of French
philosopher Lefebvre, and transforms
marginality into centrality. hooks, in her
‘purposeful peripheralness’ thus acquires a
‘strategic positioning that disorders, disrupts
JO LITTLE32
and transgresses the center-periphery
relationship itself’ (Soja, 1996: 84).
For hooks, her activism and desire to counter
the oppressive nature of the Black experience in
the USA is a ‘politics of location’ which calls:
those of us who would participate in the
formation of counter-hegemonic cultural
practice to identify the spaces where we begin
the process of re-vision . . . For many of us,
that moment requires pushing against
oppressive boundaries set by race, sex and class
domination . . . For me this space of radical
openness is a margin – a profound edge.
(hooks, 1990: 149, quoted
in Soja, 1996: 85).
As part of the displacing of oppositional
categories, thirdspace also challenges the
division between academic theorizing and
political action and does so through the use of
multiple scales of analysis – from the global to
the local and in between.
Thirdspace is a very useful way of highlighting
the spatialization of resistance and of the
breaking down of oppositional categories in
geographical analysis. There are many examples
we can draw on where space and place give
expression to what may be seen as a challenge
to conventional dualisms, enabling us to look
beyond existing categories. Thirdspace
recognizes not only the complex nature of
identity but also the often contradictory ways
subjectivities play out in space and time. It also
allows us to think of the changing use of space
and the ways in which space and identity may
be co-constructed as temporary or transitory
sites of resistance – for example, in a political
march or rally or a protest camp.
SOCIETY–SPACE 33
Figure 2.4 Black women and spaces of resistance. Credit: Getty Images
In their edited book, Writing Women and Space:
Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies, Alison
Blunt and Gillian Rose (1994) introduce a
collection of studies which illuminate the
multiple and complex position of women in
relation to the politics and processes of
colonialization. The studies provide a very
clear illustration of what might be termed
thirdspace in contesting many of the dominant
assumptions about not only the lives of the
indigenous women but also the spaces of
colonization. Blunt and Rose argue the need
to deconstruct the binary opposition between
colonizer and colonized and in re-thinking the
varying subject positions of women and the
fixity of constructions of otherness. The
chapters in the book show the complicated
relationship between gender, race and class
and how the subject positions of women in
post-colonial settings have been formed by
the interaction of patriarchal and colonial
discourses of difference. They call for a
‘re-mapping of colonization’ to help understand
the multiple subjectivities of the colonized and
the colonial women together with the spaces in
which they interact.
Blunt and Rose’s book shows how thirdspace
can contribute to the understanding of the
relationship between space and subjectivity
in the context of the gendered politics of
post-colonialism. Many other examples have
also made use of the concept in articulating a
resistance to accepted binary subject positions
and to the spatial politics of oppression. Take,
for example, the occupation of certain spaces
by gay, lesbian and bisexual people in gay
pride marches (see Figure 2.5). Such marches
reflect a desire to question and subvert the
JO LITTLE34
Figure 2.5 Gay Pride march in New York. Credit: Getty Images
taken-for-granted heterosexual nature of public
space. The march temporarily changes the
relationship between society and space, creating
‘gay space’ – a thirdspace where behaviour and
hybrid identities deemed unacceptable at other
times are dominant. Returning to the issue of
women’s fear raised earlier, another example
of thirdspace can be seen in the attempts by
women to ‘reclaim the night’ by refusing to
be fearful, and contesting the dominant
assumptions of masculinity and violence that
surround public space at night (Koskela, 1997).
Space and place are sexualized in that they
reflect an acceptance of or hostility towards
particular spatial norms and identities – what
is known as the sexualization of space.
SOCIETY–SPACE 35
• In the past, Human Geography conceptualized space as a backdrop for social relations
and was concerned with first, the mapping of spatial inequalities and, second, the
articulation of the broad power relations through which those inequalities developed.
• Through time geographers have become more aware of the constructed nature of both
identity and space, and have recognized that socio-spatial relations are negotiated, created
and reinforced through everyday performance.
• It is clear that the co-construction of identity and space means that some identities are
accepted, where others may be seen as out of place. Notions of belonging, community
and exclusion are all central to the understanding of the relationship between society and
space.
• The exclusion of some identities means that different, hybrid identities may emerge to
destabilize and contest the dominant patterns of belonging in space and ensure the
relationship of society with space is never fixed but always ongoing and in the process of
being renegotiated.
SUMMARY
Conclusion
The study of the relationship between society
and space by geographers has developed over
time through the different phases outlined in
the chapter. This development has been
presented, perhaps rather misleadingly in the
chapter, as a rather neat sequence – primarily to
assist understanding. In reality, however, it has
not been a case of one approach replacing
another but rather there has been a shift over
time from geographical studies that sought
to map spatial characteristics and the
differentiation of social and economic
characteristics to studies that represented social
constructions of space and, finally, studies
that challenged dominant socio-spatial
constructions and focused on space as a form
of resistance. Some would suggest that such a
development has allowed geographers to think
of space in a different way. We have moved
from thinking of space as simply containing or
reflecting social difference to being a part of
how that difference is constructed, performed
and contested. Space has moved from being
passive to more active in the production of
social change and in the experience of place.
Understanding space as part of the process of
reproducing and resisting social change allows
us to think in much more hopeful and positive
ways about the strategic role of space in
resisting oppression and celebrating diversity
and opportunity.
JO LITTLE36
1. Why did geographers become dissatisfied with the mapping of spatial patterns and how
did they seek to address the limitations of such approaches?
2. How have different approaches to understanding social spatial relations been reflected in
understandings of spaces as frightening or ‘scary’?
3. What is meant by the term thirdspace and why might we associate this concept with
feelings of hope ?
DISCUSSION POINTS
Bell, M.M. (2004) Childerley: Nature and Morality in a Country Village. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
This is a book about a rural community, and provides a detailed examination of how constructions of
rural space are formulated and contested by those living and visiting the countryside. It is helpful in
illustrating the idea of the co-construction of space and society as discussed in the chapter.
Cresswell, T. (2004) Place: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
As Tim Cresswell writes in his book, Place is a form of space – it is space ‘invested with meaning’. The
book thus takes the ideas surrounding the relationship between society and space as discussed in this
chapter and applies them to the notion of ‘place’.
Holloway, L. and Hubbard, P. (2001) People and Place: The Extraordinary Geographies of Everyday
Life. Edinburgh: Prentice Hall.
A series of very accessible chapters that talk about both the way geographers have understood space
and also how different identities have experienced everyday space at the local level.
Johnston, L. and Longhurst, R. (2010) Space, Place and Sex. Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield.
This book explores different spaces of sexual identity, the assumptions and challenges that surround the
relationship between sex and space.
Soja, E. (1996) Thirdspace. Oxford: Blackwell.
A challenging book but one which provides a critical discussion of the concept of thirdspace as first used
by geographers. It situates geographers’ use of thirdspace within intellectual and empirical discussions.
FURTHER READING
Introduction: all the stuff
that we stuff in our mouths
As sure as eggs are eggs, you’ll have eaten a meal
in the last few hours. Right? Thought so. And
which one was it? Breakfast, lunch or dinner? If
you can stomach it, then pause for a minute
and just remember what you chewed up and
swallowed. Whether it was a smorgasbord or a
simple snack, review all that matter journeying
through your system, the stuff processing its
way down, channelled through digestive tract
and gut into bowel, washed over and worked
on by gastric juices. And while you go about
the work of mental regurgitation, you might
place your hands over the swell of your stomach
– go on now, all the way around – listening out
for the embarrassingly loud noises that your
organs have a habit of making as they go about
doing the necessaries. Mine just gurgled while I
wrote these words. Makes you think, doesn’t it?
The experience gets odder still if, only
momentarily, you re-cast universal human
actions – like eating – as being, well, a little bit
out of the ordinary (Bennett, 2007). There’s
no room for the squeamish here. Keep the
metabolic experiment going by revisiting in
more detail, exactly, what was on that plate.
What did you scoop from inside the foil casing
or plastic wrap? If the waste bin is nearby, be
brave, flip it open and pick out the discarded
food packaging. Take a close look at the
ingredients listed. How much does the
information provided really tell you about
source, sort or standard? What geographies
does it disclose? Or discretely pull a veil
over? Elspeth Probyn (2011) offers a few
quick pointers for the more inquisitive
geographer-eater:
The global food crisis has brought a renewed
public and academic attention to questions
of what we eat, where it comes from, how
much it costs, and whether it is sustainable
. . .
Coinciding, in ways that are more than
coincidental, with a growing awareness and
at times panic about global warming
and climate change, people are becoming
attuned to how what we always deemed as
edible (corn, soya) are being turned into
non-edible things like bio-fuels. And, as one
of the most virulent forms of globalization,
there is a seemingly endless circulation of
food scares about things we had thought
were edible – chickens that carry flu, cows
that turn mad, eggs that are bad.
(Probyn, 2011: 33)
Half a century ago, Claude Levi-Strauss,
a French anthropologist, put all that in a
CHAPTER 3
HUMAN–NON-HUMAN
Hayden Lorimer
nutshell, declaring that ‘food is good to think
with’ (1969).
Now take a deep breath and back we go to the
belly of the beast. You might well have eaten
some choice cuts (or, some not-so-select bits)
from part of another animal’s body. Perhaps
you enjoyed the differing tastes of more than
one kind of flesh (quite possibly without even
knowing it). Prior to that, you may have sliced
or diced the meat – there’s just a slim chance
you even gutted or filleted a carcass, or plucked
it clean – as part of the preparations for
cooking. Or, maybe you didn’t eat a scrap of
flesh, fowl or fish. If so, then this could just be
a fairly arbitrary occurrence, explained by your
failure to get the shopping done yesterday or
the fact that the fridge or cupboard is looking a
bit bare right now. Perhaps your religious
beliefs or your family upbringing mean that
you consider some meat types as unfit for
human consumption (and, by contrast, others
as palatable because they come from animals
slaughtered in proper observance of recognized
custom). Or, it could be that the absence of
products derived from animals’ bodies in your
diet is because you’ve actually made a moral
choice, at some stage earlier in your life, to
consciously limit the range of foodstuffs that
you consume. Like it or not, that decision
places you in a minority and confers a badge of
identity (vegetarian, pescetarian or vegan).
Depending on which of these terms fits best,
then what you just ate may have contained a
mycoprotein meat substitute product (such as
Quorn). Possibly this is because you find you
still have to suppress strong carnivorous urges
for a certain taste, tang and texture. For many
among us, the first bite taken from a bacon roll
is hard to beat, whatever the time of day. And
even having commited to a meat-free lifestyle,
it’s not always possible to be entirely sure.
Unless you have been an extra-specially careful
consumer, there might be rendered animal
tissue in the beauty products you apply to your
body or face, or in those sweets you sometimes
treat yourself to between meals, or the shoes
that protect the soles of your feet. And what
about me? Seeing as I’ve been doing all the
quizzing so far, it’s reasonable to expect an
answer. I’m one of those fish-eating sort-ofvegetarians.
By some sorts of judgement, that
stance makes me a contradiction in terms.
So, you might reasonably ask, what’s the
purpose of all this prying into personal habits
and mealtime preferences? The answer is simple
enough, and it is central to the material
conditions of our existence here on Earth.
Attitudes to meat (and an extraordinary range
of animal by-products) tell us a great deal about
how we humans understand and value the lives
of other living creatures, or ‘non-human
animals’, to adopt a semi-technical term. When
we’re not processing bits of them on the inside,
we’re wearing bits of their bodies on the
outside. It’s a scale of intimacy and sort of
immediacy that’s all too easily, and comfortably,
forgotten. For much of modern life, and for
many millions of the world’s population, it’s
just seemed better that way. The attitudes we
hold about the lives and the deaths of millions
of non-human animals, specifically reared to be
eaten, are for most of the time, kept in a mental
‘black-box’, along with a range of beliefs,
judgements, imaginings, tastes, morals and
ethics that inform our sense of place as humans
amid a greater planetary ecology of relations
(Foer, 2009; Baggini, 2005). There are
powerful ideas bundled up in there and
emotions that can pack a punch. And, when it
comes to the central concern of this chapter,
the edibility of non-human animals might be
tellingly illustrative, but that doesn’t even cover
the half of it.
HAYDEN LORIMER38
Non-human relations and
non-human agency
As geographers today are coming to realize, it
is important to trace the different forms of
relation and connection that exist between the
human and what is referred to increasingly as
‘the non-human’. Such a project has the
potential to radically alter the way that you
configure the everyday world around you, in
ways reaching far beyond the bounds of our
introductory exercise about personal patterns
of consumption, and that demand new
mind-maps to navigate by. Rethinking relations
has real kinds of analytical and material
consequence, redrawing what we understand as
the very constitution, and the basic boundaries,
of a world of ‘humans’, ‘non-humans’ and a
great medley of other ‘things’ that make up the
material culture of everyday life. If these words
already begin to read like a significant challenge
to generally accepted values – by decentring our
separate condition as human beings – then that
is no accident. The direction of travel in
current geographical thought is away from the
cherished idea of sovereign species (or what
I’ll later on refer to as ‘human exceptionalism’
and ‘ontological separatism’) and towards one
of a world populated by post-human entities,
like ‘hybrids’, ‘cyborgs’ and ‘monsters’
(Whatmore, 2002; Davies, 2003). Why is that?
Well, in truth, these days it’s not easy to say
where the human ends and the non-human
begins. As scientific visionaries plan possible
futures for radically different kinds of life on
Earth, with new biotech redesigns based on
genetic sequencing, and contemplate grand
plans for the geo-engineering of earth and
atmospheric systems, our long-standing
appreciation of organisms and physical
phenomena as things with an individual
existence, identifiably separate and sealed,
is being buffeted about. The future is no
longer the heady stuff of science fiction (as it
undoubtedly was for your parents’ generation).
A tumbledown world is widely predicted and
projected, rather than a perfect one. Elements
of it have even arrived early. And what’s still to
come does not promise to be a simple matter.
The trends in post-human geographical
thought that this chapter explores are ones
placing in question generally accepted
orthodoxies about ontology, that is to say the
very nature and reality of existence. According
to post-human principles, rather than bodies
or matter being conceived in terms of fixed,
essential states, their properties are instead to
be understood as vital and always in flux. To
acknowledge this restlessness and vitality is also
to accept that non-human entities have real and
significant agency. Whether we like it or not,
other living things and artificially intelligent
systems have the potential to act up, to bite
back, to spread virally or with volatility, to
undermine the great certainties of human will,
to evade or corrupt original designs, or simply
to move beyond our full control.
Such observations about ontology and agency
might be rooted in questions of existential
philosophy, but their implications are deeply
political. Depending on your view, they hold
significant promise or pose real threats. They
re-make us as ‘human becomings’, rather than
human beings. They open up new horizons,
where genomic data (like DNA profiles) and
ID biometrics might be the sort of evidence
used to tell us why we are the way we are.
They also topple – or just gently nudge – us
from an elevated and exceptional position,
based on an age-old assumption about the
all-powerful dominion that humans hold over
nature. These are really big considerations to
take on. Should some reassurance be necessary
as we delve deeper into the world of human
and non-human relations, it might prove
helpful if I elaborate on a new typology of
non-humans and hybrid entities. We can
HUMAN–NON-HUMAN 39
figure this as something akin to a contemporary
version of the medieval bestiary (see Figure 3.1)
or compendium of living creatures and fabled
beings.
For a start, this will mean reconfiguring some
standard disciplinary labels and accepted
classificatory terms – those first enshrined in
school classrooms and still in common usage in
university lecture theatres. So, what happens if
we expand the domain of our given subject
area, contemporary Human Geography, so that
it becomes a ‘more-than-human geography’
(Braun, 2005)? That would be a version of the
subject with its parameters stretched to better
accommodate the great tangle of spatial and
temporal relations we humans have with other
kinds of living organism, materials, objects
and a host of other ‘things’ besides, taking place
in a vast array of settings. What would the
‘more-than . . .’ version of Human Geography
include? Just to begin, numbered here would be
the entire animal kingdom, all fauna inclusive
of birds, fish and insects. Every kind of flora
too: plants and trees, mosses and algal blooms,
fruit and vegetables. But then what of living
things that are less easily mapped upon, or
tracked across a landscape, operating at a micro
or molecular scale, perhaps internal to bodies?
They need accounting for too. So the
geography unfolding is one also inclusive of
the bacteria and the bacillus, the germ and the
genetically modified life form. After all, in
the twenty-first century, the pervasive presence
of biotechnology has begun to normalize to a
degree where public attitudes seem increasingly
tolerant (or unquestioning) about the most
fundamental kinds of change. Biotech
innovations range from crops of Canola,
engineered to be tolerant of herbicides and
pesticides, to ‘Enviropig™’ (see Figure 3.2), an
enhanced line of livestock with a capability to
digest plant phosphorous more efficiently and
less toxically.
HAYDEN LORIMER40
Figure 3.1 An illustrated page from a bestiary:
an ancient kind of book containing descriptions in
text and image of all sorts of animals, real and
imaginary, monstrous and fabulous. Creatures were
not described in scientific terms, but rather in
humorous or imaginative ways, sometimes with
moral judgements cast on aspects of non-human
behaviour. Credit: British Library
Figure 3.2 Enviropig™ is a genetically enhanced
strain of swine, derived from the Yorkshire pig.
Biotechnological intervention has altered the
creature’s digestive process so that the manure
produced from cereal grain consumption has lower
phosphorous content. The manure can then be
spread on farmland with less environmental risk
of phosphorous leaching into freshwater ponds,
streams and rivers, leading to reductions in water
quality or fish populations. Credit: © 2012
University of Guelph – All Rights Reserved
And there’s more space required yet. The
category of the ‘more-than-human’ must also
encompass non-human beings that, while not
being fully sentient or necessarily organic in
origin, are nonetheless active and dynamic
forms that significantly shape the conditions
of contemporary living. Non-human agency
flourishes, in everything from the yeasts that rise
in bread to fruit crops that fall from trees, in the
tides generating supplies of renewable energy
to the pulses that transmit electrical power to
industrial destinations and domestic households
(Bennett, 2010). The more-than-human realm
must also take in genetic data and chemical
compounds, the classic experimental apparatus
of pipettes and petri dishes, through to
laser-guided neuroscience. Witness the fact that
some geographers now research in the company
of scientists who are operating on the frontiers
of experimental biomedical science where
trans-species mutants proliferate (Davis, in
press), or developing programmes for animal
conservation through species ‘back-breeding’
(Lorimer and Driesson, in press). Still more
capacity is necessary for entities from this
‘more-than . . .’ world. It must take in the host
of machines, mechanical and digital (from robot
milking machines for dairy cows to unmanned
military drones). It must encompass software
environments (from android apps to iClouds
and online social networks) now so very deeply
programmed into the fabrics and rhythms of
life as to sometimes seem inseparable from the
very core of existence. As I sit here typing,
the smart device nestled snug in my pocket
gently vibrated, as if to verify the modern
maxim that ‘you’re never alone with a phone’.
In certain instances, transplanted or implanted
biomedical technologies operate internal to
bodies (maintaining stabilities in heart-rate or
mood), or they can work as sensory fixes and
anatomical add-ons, augmenting the capacities
and competencies of naturally evolved human
form. To illustrate one such socio-technical
advance, consider the case of Oscar Pistorius,
South African track athlete, gold-medallist
paralympian and first ever paralympic athlete
to qualify for the Olympic Games (see Figure
3.3). A double amputee, dubbed ‘The
Bladerunner’ and ‘the fastest man on no legs’,
Pistorius runs using Cheetah Flex-Foot carbon
fibre transtibial artificial limbs, fitted below
HUMAN–NON-HUMAN 41
Figure 3.3 Oscar Pistorius is an athlete with a
difference, who poses interesting questions for the
worlds of sport, law and ethics. Hi-tech prosthetics,
fitted to his kneecaps, enable him to compete at the
highest levels of international track competition with
able-bodied athletes. In 2012, his personal best for
running 400m stands at 45.07 seconds. Credit:
Getty Images
the kneecap. In the process, he troubles
internationally accepted rules, set to ensure
that competition takes place on a ‘level playing
field’. Sporting arbitrators and authorities are
anxious that the pioneering design of his
prosthetics could actually place Pistorius at
a freakish advantage when running against
able-bodied athletes. Perhaps the Bladerunner
is blazing a trail for other ‘cyborg-athletes’ who
yet might perform superhuman feats, rewrite
the record books and win the human race.
Hybrid anatomical designs are not always so
glamorous or so quick to grab headlines. It is
now standard practice for dentists to offer
a patient the option of a cow bone implant
as part of a surgical procedure for fusing a
replacement denture to a remaining tooth root.
Whether cosmetic, commercial or biomedical,
this is only one in an increasingly diverse range
of treatments and interventions available that
depend on trans-species fusions to rebuild,
regenerate and replace parts of bodies.
A point could be reached where, quite properly,
questions need to be asked about the possible
extent of this experiment in relational thinking.
What is to be left out from the category of
non-human beings? Is it a case of everything
and the kitchen sink? Where do these complex
material assemblages of related stuff stop? Is it
actually possible to differentiate between sorts
of being? Surely, of necessity, there must be
some spatial and temporal limits established,
otherwise wouldn’t everything end up being
connected to everything else? Where and how
to place spatial limits around the interactions
of human and non-human is an important
consideration for geographers, and some of the
more conceptually driven thinking that can
enable this to happen is introduced in the
next section.
HAYDEN LORIMER42
• ‘More-than-human geographies’ is a label that invites a full disciplinary rethink about the
hybrid forms that life seems increasingly to take, and about how multivariate entities are
related to one another.
• The agency of non-human animals, objects and entities is a phenomenon being treated
seriously by geographers, based on a growing recognition that we humans are not in sole
control of social situations.
• Thinking about how environments and situations happen in relational terms can be
enlightening, but simultaneously it is worth wondering about the spatial and social reach of
these relations.
SUMMARY
Into the mangle of
post-humanism
In recent years, a variety of big ideas has been
utilized by geographers who are thinking about
diverse assemblies of human and non-human
entities. Arguably, it is along the threshold of
human–non-human existence that some of
geography’s most inventive thinking is
happening. Some of this originality draws
on the discipline’s own intellectual heritage,
though it also reflects a lively traffic in ideas
with other subject areas, like anthropology,
sociology and philosophy. To begin with,
encountering these exchanges can be a fairly
daunting business, partly because it means
becoming reasonably literate in unfamiliar sorts
of language. This section will begin that task by
mapping out three key conceptual influences
and highlighting some of the new geographies
that are being produced as a result.
The emergence of ‘new animal geographies’
(Emel and Wolch, 1998; Philo and Wilbert,
2000) is a good place to turn to first. This field of
study reminded many geographers of the need
for a far greater understanding of the spacing
of the lives of non-human animals in Human
Geographies, and encouraged a subtler
appreciation of the placing of the lives of humans
in animal geographies. The subjects of these
relations range all the way from wolves
(Brownlow, 2000) to foxes (Woods, 2000),
pet dogs (Howell, 2000) to feral cats (Griffiths
et al., 2000). Sometimes concerned with animals
as symbolic representations and sometimes as
substantial lively things, this work ensured that –
whatever the nature of the relation encountered –
matters of social power and moral–ethical
concern were kept to the fore. Such studies of
inter-species relations have since extended to
include other kinds of non-human agencies
and biotechnical assemblages. The ‘hybrid
geographies’ written about by Lewis Holloway
(2007; 2009) and Carol Morris (2009) are those
employed in the commercial breeding of farm
livestock. They show how the genetic revolution
has created entirely new spaces and scales of
knowledge, meaning that cows are very
differently understood as creatures. They consider
such developments as a powerful expression of
‘biopower’, a concept that originates with Michel
Foucault, a French philosopher, relocated, so
as to include animal lives. Biopower captures
the human will to regulate conditions of living
and the nature of life itself.
Second, geographers have learned some
important lessons from social anthropology
about the ways that the lifeworlds of
humans and non-humans are enmeshed or
co-constituted. The ‘relational ecology’ of Tim
Ingold (2000; 2011) has had a telling effect.
Drawing on ethnographic observations of the
lifestyles of non-Western, indigenous peoples,
Ingold explains the cosmological beliefs that
inform systems of environmental perception in
these worlds. Here, animals, birds, trees, rivers,
weather and humans are all ‘persons’, who
might come to share in each other’s wisdoms,
sometimes even shifting identities and bodies as
they do so. This makes indigenous knowledge
systems and languages about the skies, sea and
land among the world’s most ancient, but also
shows how well attuned indigenous ideas are to
prevailing environmental theories concerned
with ontological hybridity and fluidity. ‘Old
ways’ that originate in the lived experiences
and practical skills required for the upkeep
of extended communities of humans and
non-humans serve to remind us that not
everything is new under the sun. Geographers
have taken these ideas on different travels,
exploring nearby worlds and familiar
landscapes, the kinds found in fruit orchards
(Jones and Cloke, 2002) and among herd
animals (Lorimer, 2006), showing the meshing
together of agencies into local swirls of life.
Finally, when it comes to challenging the
principles of ‘human exceptionalism’ and
‘ontological separatism’, Bruno Latour, a
French sociologist, has his own ideas. Like
Ingold’s, these imports have been highly
influential in geography. Latour offers up
a powerful argument about the state of
humankind: ‘we have never been modern’
(1993). By this provocation, Latour means to
expose something he believes has been hiding
in plain sight for centuries. Namely, that the
model separating ‘culture’ and ‘nature’ is a false
intellectual construct. Instead of imposing this
model to claim power and making distinctions,
we need to apprehend worlds as they actually
HUMAN–NON-HUMAN 43
are. That is, as a succession of fabricated
environments, comprising human and
non-human beings, involved in spatially
distributed interactions, normally through
socially equivalent conditions. Latour’s
particular way of thinking places greatest
emphasis on the practical relations existing
between actors and agents and intermediary
objects and technologies. It is attentive to a
social realm made up of networks, circulations
and translations. It has been applied, rather like
a helpful tool or template, to all manner of
socio-technical spaces and ordinary situations.
He once used it to explain the operations of an
entire public transportation system, affording
agency to its constituent parts (Latour, 1996).
Some geographers have taken up his toolkit,
using it to explain the ways that water vole
conservation happens (Hinchliffe et al., 2005),
how the hunting of foxes has been represented
in the British countryside (Woods, 2000) and
how elephants were hunted in the British
Empire (Lorimer and Whatmore, 2009).
As well as scrambling nature and culture,
Latourian thinking can break down all manner
of other dualisms: organic/inorganic,
inside/outside, architectural/environmental,
biological/artificial. What results from this
melding together of social, natural and
technical environments? Bruno Latour has
likened what results to a ‘parliament of things’.
In so doing, he aims to provide the practical
impetus for a new social ideal, where emerging
sciences and technologies can be subject to
public scrutiny, and as a consequence become
more transparent.
In different ways, the proliferation of big ideas
has helped more-than-human geographers to
grapple with very tricky questions concerning
the extent to which it is ever possible to claim
to fully know animality, and how to write
about the agency of non-human entities. To
different degrees, this work still struggles with
concerns raised about anthropomorphism, or
what is called ‘x-morphism’ in the case of other
objects (Laurier and Philo, 1999). Anxieties
also remain about what ultimately is bound
to remain unknowable, since for all the
inter-species affinities that are detected, there is
still a ‘beastliness of being animal’ that must
also be respected. In the following section,
I want to turn the focus of attention to an
alternative kind of experiment told as a true
animal story that will provide some imaginative
resources to work through these ethical and
moral conundrums.
‘One pig’: the animal–
art–agriculture–advocacy
assemblage
Having decided to buy himself a pig,
Matthew Herbert took a trip to market. Well,
sort of. Truth be told, this most traditional
kind of transaction took place by more modern
means. Herbert’s own record label ‘Accidental’
(a micro-operation run out of the second floor
of Unit 11, Block A, Greenwich Quarry,
London) agreed to pay £100 to take legal
ownership of one pig, selected from a litter of
eleven piglets born to a sow on a family-run
piggery in Kent, England. You can see
the invoice (No. 1421) (see Figure 3.4),
processed in March 2009. Over the next 20
months, Herbert amassed an archive of field
and farm recordings that track the lifecycle of
the pig, all the way from birth to slaughter
to plate. As his purchase steadily put on the
pork, Herbert kept a blog, documenting its
development and describing its health and
general welfare. In the process, one pig
morphed into ‘One Pig’: an unlikely centrefold
star in an experiment combining recorded
music and live performance, art and appetite,
animal-rights activism and animal husbandry,
travelling all the way from farm to fork, and
then to places beyond. Clearly, the life and the
HAYDEN LORIMER44
death of this pig is going to require a little more
explaining . . .
The first thing to clear up about Matthew
Herbert is that he is no pig farmer. Nor is he a
geographer. He is a musician – critically
acclaimed among the cognoscenti of a genre
known as ‘electronica’ (see Figures 3.5 and 3.6)
– and he’s a meat-eater too. Herbert has a
history of audio experimentation, especially
when it comes to sourcing the sounds that are
used in his recordings. Some years ago, he
wrote an influential artists’ manifesto entitled
‘Personal Contract for the Composition of
Music’ (PCCOM), which appeals for recording
artists to avoid using drum machines and preexisting
samples in their work. Herbert suggests
that sounds should come live-from-life.
Sticking to his principles, he uses everyday life
in the twenty-first century as a sound palette:
‘With the invention of the sampler, I can now
explicitly root my work in the literal, critical
present. I can describe the real in the frame of
the imaginary’ (www.matthewherbert.com/
biography).
HUMAN–NON-HUMAN 45
Figure 3.4 Just as there are
many ways ‘to skin a cat’,
there are lots of methods for
purchasing a pig. Here is
documentary evidence of
Matthew Herbert becoming
the proud owner of ‘One Pig’.
Credit: Matthew Herbert/Solar
Management Ltd
F A 0D
19 FEB 2010
To: Accidental Records Ltd Date: 8th Feb 2010
2nd Floor
Unit 11, Block A Invoice No: 1421
Greenwich Quarry
London
SE83EY
INVOICE
Qty Details Total
1.0 Pig 100.00 100.00
You are welcome to settle this invoice by BACS.
Please post/fax/email your remittance to the details shown above.
PLEASE MAKE CHEQUES PAYABLE TO
TOTAL TO PAY] £100.00]
This creative vision for truth-telling has shaped
his recording practice ever since. On The
Mechanics of Destruction, Herbert samples
McDonald’s products and Gap merchandise as
a protest against corporate globalism. Plat Du
Jour, another activist album, contains one track
of compressed sounds that retell ‘The
Truncated Life of a Modern Industrialised
Chicken’. The album One Pig pushed the
political–ethical project of human–non-human
relations further still. It is a musical portrait of
an animal bred, ultimately, for human
consumption. In the process, Herbert attempts
various things: to make more meaningful the
lives of animals reared for meat; to force us to
ask critical questions about the global meat
industry; and to make more transparent the
direct consequences of our appetites and
actions. So is it a recording to relish? You
can decide for yourself by listening at:
www.matthewherbert.com (or search for ‘One
Pig’ on YouTube). I should be honest. Some
tracks don’t necessarily make for the easiest of
listens. It ranks as the kind of thing music
critics tend to describe as ‘challenging’. Spliced
through the crunchy beats and melodic blips
are classic farmyard sounds (hay shuffling
under foot and trotter), darker echoing squeals,
distorted grunts, a chorus of competing snorts
and oinks, mechanical clunks and clangs,
a medley of manipulated scraping, sucking,
sipping and slurping sounds, a knife being
sharpened (then cleaned, perhaps?), a hacksaw
cutting (for legal reasons, Herbert was not
able to record actual sounds from the pig’s
slaughter), human voices, kitchen clatter,
chomping and chewing noises and the
appreciative kind of exhalation (‘aaaahhhhhhh’)
made by a happy eater whose taste buds
are being given an extra special treat. The
butchering of One Pig was announced plainly
on Herbert’s blog: ‘Wednesday, February 10,
2010 at 11:18PM. The pig is now dead.’
Track by track, the affect of listening can be
comfortably appealing, sometimes funny, but
also disorienting and disturbing.
The afterlife of this individual pig keeps on
happening, taking diverse forms of cultural
expression and occupying unexpected spaces.
The album artwork (see Figure 3.7) displays a
range of lavish dishes cooked with the pig’s
meat (‘ballotine of pork shoulder with tomato
jelly’, ‘five-spice braised pig’s head with borage
and organic summer vegetables’) and a selection
of by-products derived from body parts (pig
trotter candelabra, pig fat candles, a pigskin
drum). The drum was one of the percussion
HAYDEN LORIMER46
Figure 3.5/Figure 3.6 Matthew Herbert keeping
company with pigs during field recordings at a
piggery. Such intimacy in relations between
humans and livestock is not new; in the pre-modern
world, a swineherd was a person who looked after
pigs. Credit: Matthew Herbert/Solar Management
Ltd
instruments used for a string of live dates
during recent European and UK tours. In these
performances, Herbert’s quintet appeared on
stage dressed in traditional butcher’s outfits
(shirt-and-tie, knee-length white coat). He
described the shows as an alternative kind of
remembrance service, the music built from
memories of the ghost-pig, and backed by slide
projections from its former life (a bit like a
farm-family album). Digital and material
technologies were crucial to the spectacle of pig
re-presentation. Performances centred on the
‘StyHarp’, a custom-built instrument formed of
glowing red wires that mark the perimeter walls
of an otherwise invisible pigpen. It is played by
plucking and pulling, actions that activate a
series of sound modules. Part way through the
set, a chef joined the musicians on stage. The
sizzling sound of pork frying was amplified.
The smell of meat cooking filled the venue.
Audience participation was encouraged. As a
finale, taste samples were dished out to the
most curious on the dance floor, an act
rendering One Pig as an assemblage of
animal-art-agriculture-advocacy.
HUMAN–NON-HUMAN 47
Figure 3.7 Some of the culinary products of One
Pig’s life and Herbert’s artistic labours. Credit:
Matthew Herbert/Solar Management Ltd
• A range of contrasting theories and concepts currently inform geographical thought about
how it is possible to reconfigure relations, persons and entities as ‘post-human’.
• When it comes to a world of hybrids, capitalism, compassion and creativity are all motors
of invention, but the formation of new entities can occur as an accidental event too.
• It is possible to identify possibilities and problems in the post-human condition, though it
seems highly unlikely that a universal moral–ethical judgement can be cast. Instead there will
be local geographies of reaction, ranging from opposition to enchantment.
SUMMARY
Conclusion: Between
creaturely wonder and
animal welfare
It is very difficult to say with any degree of
moral certainty if One Pig was luckier than the
anonymous millions that are reared annually in
agro-industry and then processed through the
global meat industry. Quite possibly it was, in
its short life. But for all the creaturely wonder
engendered, ultimately this single animal
befell the same fate. Arguably, the creation
of ambiguous feeling is precisely the point of
Herbert’s more-than-human project.
It seems only proper that this chapter finds a
way to end by returning to where it began, with
gut feelings about non-human animals . . . as
foodstuffs (Highmore, 2011). At present,
commercially reared pigs really are big business
on the world stage, in spite of recent food scares
(Mizelle, 2011; Law and Mol, 2008). Pork is a
key foodstuff catering to growing appetites and
shifting dietary patterns among the expanding
populations of Asia. Recently, Tulip (the UK’s
largest maker of Danepak Bacon and Spam)
signed a £50 million pork export deal with
China, the world’s biggest pork market. The
Guardian newspaper reported that:
Much of the exported pork will be offal,
tripe, trotters, ears and other parts of the
so-called ‘fifth quarter’ – the parts even
meat-eating Brits tend to turn their nose
up at, but the Chinese savour.
[The Guardian, 2012]
To me, this seems like capitalism in its
purest form. As a globalized rationale for
slaughterhouse efficiency the visceral concept of
the ‘fifth quarter’ recalls the earliest days of the
pork industry when American meat packers
boasted about how they had found a use for
‘everything but the squeal’. As well as pork, UK
exports of live breeding pigs to China are being
stepped up. Up to 900 at a time travel east
by jumbo jet, on a non-stop twelve-hour
flight, then ‘once breeding herds have been
established, farmers send bottles of semen to
keep the production line going, supplemented
by a new batch of sows every year’ (Kollewe,
2012). What we have here are sites, flows
and things (in the shape of farming practices,
health protocols, live animals, trade emissaries,
rendered meat, food safety officers and bodily
fluids) all on the move around the globe. For
Emma Roe, this is a situation raising critical
issues around standards of animal welfare and
about the material realities of agri-industrial
production. Her unflinching account of a
pig ‘slaughter event’ contains genuinely
discomforting details:
The pig carcass is put in hot water at 60
degrees Celsius to loosen its hairs. The pig is
wet and slippery when it comes out of the
hot bath. Some smaller pig carcasses slip
onto the floor and are dragged back again
onto the table. Then the carcass is put in a
big tumbler to dry and ‘rub off’ as many
hairs as possible. A pig has edible skin, so the
hairs are meticulously removed, and as little
water as possible is used to clean the meat
(should any faecal matter slip out of the
rectum as the whole of the digestive system
is removed).
(Roe, 2010: 271)
The graphic journey that Roe takes her readers
on, along the brimming gutters of the food
factory, was one once undertaken by Upton
Sinclair (1906) in his novel The Jungle, and is
today rehearsed by celebrity chefs and television
film crews.
We might feel like we know that script. But
what stuff really matters here? It seems that
even at the same time as the categories of
human and non-human blur (or all but
dissolve), a sense for what is humane and
inhumane must be protected. As sentient
human-animals we feel the suffering of others.
That offers us very good grounds for
establishing a new relational ethics that can
encompass more of life that is more-thanhuman.
We must also acknowledge that these
relational ethics will shift in shape and
expression, according to the multiple beings
enrolled into their constitution and the locally
global spaces in which they keep on taking
place.
HAYDEN LORIMER48
HUMAN–NON-HUMAN 49
1. What parts of the post-human condition are you comfortable about, and what bits make you
most concerned? Ask yourself why.
2. What happens to your normal daily round of work and leisure activities if you try to rethink
them as assemblages of hybrid entities, enrolled together by relations and connections?
3. Discuss whether the concept of more-than-human geographies might have significant
implications for physical geography.
4. Discuss how the experience of listening to Matthew Herbert’s ‘One Pig’ recordings made
you feel.
5. Read through a daily newspaper (online or hard copy) and try to identify an article or
feature that is concerned with something that poses a challenge to the idea of sealed-in
human and non-human entities.
DISCUSSION POINTS
Davies, G. (2003) ‘A geography of monsters?’ In: Geoforum 34(4) 409–12.
A short commentary piece that throws open the possibility of thinking about the world as populated by
monsters, old and new.
Lorimer, H. (2006) ‘Herding memories of humans and animals’. In: Environment and Planning D: Society
and Space 24(4) 497–518.
A paper that explores how it is possible to entwine the life stories of the humans and animals that make
up a herd and the place of indigenous knowledge systems in this social arrangement.
Roe, E. (2010) Ethics and the non-human: the matterings of animal sentience in the meat industry. In: B.
Anderson and P. Harrison (eds.) Taking-place: Non-Representational Theories and Geography. London:
Ashgate, 261–83.
A book chapter offering a detailed and insightful consideration of the ethics of the meat industry. It draws
on fieldwork findings from inside the slaughterhouse and leaves very little to the imagination.
Whatmore, S. (2002) Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Culture, Spaces. London: Sage.
An excellent, radical and influential book that explains the theoretical conditions for thinking of
geographies as hybrid.
FURTHER READING
HAYDEN LORIMER50
www.matthewherbert.com
As well as the full album version, One Pig’s life recordings have been compressed into a three-minute-long
montage track, available on digital format. Alternatively, courtesy of Micachu, you can listen to an EP of
dancefloor-friendly remixes of original One Pig tracks.
WEBSITE
Introduction
The term modern has been used for many
centuries to distinguish a new social order
from previous ones, and ideas of the modern
are most commonly defined through their
opposition to the old and the traditional.
This ‘oppositional definition’ has taken
many forms. In post-Roman Europe the
term modernus was used to distinguish a
Christian present from a pagan past (Johnston
et al., 2000), while in the late seventeenth
century the quarrel between the ‘Ancients’
and the ‘Moderns’ spilled out from a debate
over literature to embrace ideas of religion
and social issues, causing the term ‘modern’
to enter widespread public usage for the first
time. Towards the end of the eighteenth
century, the term modern acquired another
meaning, this time denoting a qualitative
and not just a chronological difference from
pervious eras. To live in a modern age denoted
not just newness but also progress and
betterment. Linked to the Enlightenment
search for rational scientific thought, the idea
began to emerge that humans could change
history for the better, and that progress could
be controlled and ordered – rather than history
being done to people in a manner that was
preordained
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries this notion of modernity as progress
held sway (see also Chapter 32). Rapid changes
in economy, technology, culture and society
meant that, in Europe at least, each generation
could claim to be qualitatively different from
previous ones. Stephen Kern, for instance,
summarizes the changes that were taking place
at the end of the nineteenth century:
From around 1880 to the outbreak of
World War I a series of sweeping changes in
technology and culture created distinctive
new modes of thinking about and
experiencing time and space. Technological
innovations including the telephone,
wireless, telegraph, x-ray, cinema, bicycle,
automobile and airplane established the
material foundation for this reorientation;
independent cultural developments such
as the stream of consciousness novel,
psychoanalysis, Cubism, and the theory
of relativity shaped consciousness directly.
The result was a transformation of the
dimensions of life and thought.
(Kern, 1983: 1–2)
CHAPTER 4
MODERN–
POSTMODERN
Mark Goodwin
Our experiences of these ‘transformations in life
and thought’ became labelled as modernity
(Berman, 1982). Their artistic, cultural and
aesthetic expression was called modernism. So,
while ideas of being modern can be traced back
several centuries, notions of modernity and
modernism coalesced around a very particular
twentieth-century experience – one to be
especially found in the emerging cosmopolitan
urban centres of Berlin, Paris and New York.
The impacts of modernity and modernism
spread out from these cultural heartlands to
influence us all. Even at the beginning of the
twenty-first century, the built environment that
most of us inhabit has largely been shaped by
modernism. The houses we live in, the offices
and factories we work in, the chairs we sit on
and the tables we sit at, and the graphic design
we see around us – on shop fronts and in
newspapers and magazines – have all been
created by the aesthetics and ideology of
modernist design.
Towards the end of the twentieth century,
however, modernism was challenged by a new
movement which significantly did not label
itself as another stage in modernity. Instead it
self-consciously proclaimed itself to be
postmodern – to be different from, and
moving beyond modernity. In the arts and
literature, in philosophy and in the social
sciences, postmodernism and postmodernity
began to flourish. As the geographer Michael
Dear put it in 1994 ‘Postmodernity is
everywhere, from literature, design and
philosophy, to MTV, ice cream and underwear’
(1994: 3).
What I want to do in the rest of this chapter is
to trace the continuities and discontinuities
between the modern and the postmodern and
to sketch how geography and geographers have
been influenced by, and in turn influenced,
both movements.
MARK GOODWIN52
Marhall Berman’s description of Modernity
There is a mode of vital experience – experience of space and time, of the self and others,
of life’s possibilities and perils – that is shared by men and women all over the world today.
I will call this body of experience ‘modernity’. To be modern is to find ourselves in an
environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and
the world – and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything
we know, everything we are. Modern environments and experiences cut across all boundaries
of geography and ethnicity, of class and nationality, of religion and ideology: in this sense,
modernity can be said to unite all mankind. But it is a paradoxical unity, a unity of disunity:
it pours us all into a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and
contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish. To be modern is to be part of a universe in which, as
Marx said, ‘all that is solid melts into air’.
(From Berman, 1982: 15)
CASE STUDY
Modernism and postmodernism:
continuities
and discontinuities
Dear (1994: 3-4) identifies three components
of postmodernism and postmodernity –
style, epoch and method. We will use this
classification to trace and analyse the shift from
the modern to the postmodern.
Style
While we can trace the shift from a modern to
a postmodern style across art, literature and
music, architecture has become paradigmatic
for discussing such a shift. Indeed, it has often
been used as the starting point for discussions
of postmodernity more generally, perhaps
because it provides a very visible and public
presence of changes in style. It also provides an
immediate link to the concerns of geographers
interested in the changing form and function of
the built environment. The modern movement
certainly stamped its authority on the
architecture of the age: at the core of the
movement lay the idea that the world had to be
completely rethought and that following the
carnage of the First World War, a more rational
and enlightened society could be built – both
socially and architecturally. The result was a set
of sweeping changes in urban design, both in
MODERN–POSTMODERN 53
Figure 4.1 Villa La Roche, designed by Le Corbusier.
terms of planning whole neighbourhoods and
designing individual buildings. The latter came
first, with initial appearances of architectural
modernism being confined to small-scale infill
buildings. The famous Villa La Roche, for
instance, designed in 1925 by Le Corbusier,
perhaps the most famous of all modernist
architects, for a Swiss banker and art collector,
lies at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Parisian
district of Auteuil, still surrounded by
nineteenth-century housing (see Figure 4.1).
In the 1930s, inspired by the famous Bauhaus
movement, this modern style of architecture
began to be used to design and construct
housing estates, office blocks and whole
communities. It reached its zenith with the
large-scale urban renewal schemes of the 1950s
and 1960s which can be found in almost every
major city in the western world. The watch
words of this urban design were rationality,
order and efficiency, and the result was a
technocratic and industrialized ordering of
public space. Figure 4.2 contrasts an early Le
Corbusier vision for the complete reordering of
Paris (never built of course!) with the layout
of Stuyvesant Town in New York, a private
housing community which was built
immediately after the Second World War. The
universalism of modern architecture means that
the same forms can be found across the globe,
the result of new construction techniques and
the mass use of ‘new’ materials such as glass,
steel and concrete. Somewhat ironically, by
the end of the 1960s, modernist architecture
came to be seen as drab, functional and
commonplace and had lost its early rationale as
a revolutionary opposition to the traditional
forms of what the modern movement perceived
as the reactionary nineteenth century.
Reaction to modernist architecture formed
part of the anti-modernist movements which
developed towards the end of the 1960s. These
eventually crystallized around the emergence
of a new postmodern style. In opposition to
the austerity and formalism of modern
architecture, postmodernism developed as a
more playful alternative, emphasizing pastiche
and collage. Rather than emphasizing the
universalism of functional modernism,
postmodern architecture was centred around
vernacular and traditional styles, often rooted
in regional traditions, with the result that
diversity and pluralism replaced uniformity. An
early example of such architecture was provided
by the AT&T building in New York (now the
Sony Building), designed by Philip Johnson
MARK GOODWIN54
Figure 4.2 (a) Le Corbusier’s dream for Paris in the 1920s; (b) the achieved design for Stuyvesant Town,
New York. Credit: (a) © FLC/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2013; (b) Alec Jordan (Creative
Commons)
and completed in 1984 (see Figure 4.3).
Here the playfulness of postmodernism is
celebrated by a pediment at the top resembling
Chippendale furniture and an arched entry
some seven stories high. As construction
techniques developed, architects began to create
even more distinct building forms. Figure 4.4
shows the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles,
designed by Frank Gehry; the contrast with the
traditional modernist towers in the background
is stark.
MODERN–POSTMODERN 55
Figure 4.3 AT&T building in New York, an early
example of postmodern architecture, with more
austere and functional modernist blocks adjacent
and behind. Credit: Getty Images
Figure 4.4 The Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in the foreground, with more traditional and functional
modernist office towers in the background. Credit: Getty Images
Epoch
The surface differences between the
architectural styles of modernism and
postmodernism are clear to see. They are
reinforced by other cultural differences in
literary styles and in photography and design
(Harvey, 1989; Huyssen, 1984). The question
is whether these are enough to signal a radical
break with past social and cultural trends and
thereby form a distinct epoch following that
of modernity. One key problem for those
attempting to chart such a break is the
difficulty of theorizing contemporary trends.
As Dear puts it:
any landscape is simultaneously composed of
obsolete, current, and emergent artifacts: but
how do we begin to codify and understand
this variety? And at what point is the
accumulated evidence sufficient to announce
a radical break with the past? The idea that
we are living in ‘new times’ is seductive, but
there are no clear answers to these questions.
(Dear, 1994: 3)
Geographers have played a key role in the
search for such answers. In particular, two
extremely influential books, both published in
1989, placed space, uneven development and
urbanism at the centre of these debates. The
first, David Harvey’s Condition of Postmodernity
became a bestseller across the humanities
and social sciences. The second, Ed Soja’s
Postmodern Geographies consciously set out
to reassert the role of space in social theory
more generally. Both emphasized the role of
geography and uneven development as active
moments in the construction of both
modernity and postmodernity, rather than as
simple reflections of them. Harvey had the
more critical take on ideas of postmodernity as
a distinct new epoch. His understanding was
traced through the four parts of the book.
Part one examines the major themes in the
transition from modernism to postmodernism
across elements as diverse as urban planning,
painting, literature and music. But Harvey
differs from many academics that have
identified similar changes by relating them to
underlying shifts in the capitalist economy. The
second part continues this theme, by setting
out and analysing a political–economic
transition away from Fordism and situating the
rise of postmodern representations within this
transition. Here again, the cultural practices
of postmodernity are related to underlying
economic shifts. For Harvey, the shift towards
flexible accumulation helps to explain why
postmodernity often appears as fleeting and
ephemeral. But for Harvey, while the surface
appearances of capitalism may have changed, its
underlying logic, which leads to a constant set
MARK GOODWIN56
• Modernism developed in opposition to the perceived tradition and conservatism of
nineteenth-century art, literature and architecture.
• Modernism developed to encompass a global style, emphasizing universality, functionalism
and order.
• Postmodernism developed in opposition to the perceived austerity of modernism and
emphasized diversity, playfulness and plurality.
SUMMARY
of crises, remains the same. In Part three of the
book, Harvey examines different conceptions
of space and time under modernity and
postmodernity. Again, he tends to highlight the
similarities between the two rather than the
differences by emphasizing that both modern
and postmodern periods are dominated by
what Harvey calls ‘time–space compression’.
This is not just about ever-quicker forms of
global communication and travel, but also
refers to the ever-accelerated rate at which
capital has to turnover to make a profit.
For Harvey this leads to an accentuation
of volatility and ephemerality in fashion,
consumer goods and production techniques
as well as in ideas, ideologies and values. In
this sense, Berman’s idea that modernity is
characterized by all that is solid meting
into air (see Case Study on p. 52) is now
transferred to postmodernity. In Part four
Harvey merges political, economic and cultural
analyses to produce an understanding
which emphasizes the continuing internal
contradictions of capitalism, rather than the
categorical distinction between modernism
and postmodernism (see Table 4.1).
Soja stresses the differences of postmodernism
from modernism, but also refuses to see it
as a distinct epoch, preferring instead to
characterize it ‘as another deep and broad
restructuring of modernity, rather than a
complete break’ (1989: 5). However, Soja uses
the move towards postmodernity to emphasize
the role of space in social thought. This is
not just about empirically investigating
the new spaces and architectural forms of
postmodernity, but of building a spatial
awareness into the very foundations of social
theory. According to Soja (1989: 31), the
traditions of the two dominant social theories
within modernism – Positivism and Marxism –
caused the ‘virtual annihilation of space by time
MODERN–POSTMODERN 57
Ed Soja’s description of postmodernity
With exquisite irony, contemporary Los Angeles has come to resemble more than ever before a
gigantic agglomeration of theme parks, a lifespace comprised of Disneyworlds. It is a realm
divided into showcases of global village cultures and mimetic American landscapes, allembracing
shopping malls and crafty Main Streets, corporation-sponsored magic kingdoms,
high-technology-based experimental prototype communities of tomorrow, attractively packaged
places for rest and recreation, all cleverly hiding the buzzing workstations and labour
processes which hold it together. The experience of living here can be extremely diverting and
exceptionally enjoyable, especially for those who can afford to remain inside long enough to
establish their own modes of transit and places to rest. And of course, the enterprise has been
enormously profitable over the years. After all, it was built on what began as relatively cheap
land, has been sustained by a constantly replenishing army of even cheaper imported labour,
is filled with the most modern technological gadgetry, enjoys extraordinary levels of protection
and surveillance, and runs under the smooth aggression of the most efficient management
systems, almost always capable of delivering what is promised just in time to be useful.
(Soja, 1989: 246)
CASE STUDY
MARK GOODWIN58
Fordist modernity Flexible postmodernity
economies of scale/master code/ hierarchy
homogeneity/detail division of labour
economies of scope/idiolect/anarchy
diversity/social division of labour
paranoia/alienation/symptom
public housing/monopoly capital
schizophrenia/decentering/desire
homelessness/entrepreneurialism
purpose/design/mastery/determinancy
production capital/universalism
play/chance/exhaustion/indeterminancy
fictitious capital/localism
state power/trade unions
state welfarism/metropolis
financial power/individualism
neo-conservatism/counterurbanization
ethics/money commodity
God the Father/materiality
aesthetics/moneys of account
The Holy Ghost/immateriality
production/originality/authority
blue collar/avant-gardism
interest group politics/semantics
reproduction/pastiche/eclecticism
white collar/commercialism
charismatic politics/rhetoric
centralization/totalization
synthesis/collective bargaining
decentralization/deconstruction
antithesis/local contracts
operational management/master code
phallic/single task/origin
strategic management/idiolect
androgynous/multiple tasks/trace
metatheory/narrative/depth
mass production/class politics
technical-scientific rationality
language games/image/surface
small-batch production/social
movements/pluralistic otherness
utopia/redemptive art/concentration
specialized work/collective consumption
heterotopias/spectacle/dispersal
flexible worker/symbolic capital
function/representation/signified
industry/protestant work ethic
mechanical reproduction
fiction/self-reference/signifier
services/temporary contract
electronic reproduction
becoming/epistemology/regulation
urban renewal/relative space
being/ontology/deregulation
urban revitalization/place
state interventionism/industrialization
internationalism/permanence/time
laissez-faire/deindustrialization
geopolitics/ephemerality/space
Table 4.1 David Harvey’s characterization of modernity and postmodernity – using both political–
economic and cultural–ideological relations. (Source: D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1989:
340)
in critical social thought’, squeezing geography
out of the picture. But if modernist social
theory emphasized time, progress and historical
development, for Soja, postmodernity entails
an analysis of space and uneven development.
Like Harvey, Soja makes this manoeuvre by
emphasizing the uneven urban and regional
development entailed in new forms of
economic production. He illustrates this in the
book by analysing what he calls ‘the dynamics
of capitalist spatialisation’ (1989: 191) and uses
Los Angeles as an exemplary case study of
‘postmodern urbanism’. But he does so by
building a new type of urban analysis, after
noting how language and description tends to
be linear and sequential, making it difficult
to envisage the simultaneity of past and present
that is inherent in all landscapes. In his final
chapter on Los Angeles he offers a view from
above, taking the reader on an imaginary cruise
around the circumference of the sixty-mile
circle which encompasses the built-up area of
LA. The Case Study on p. 57 provides an
example of how Soja renders the experience of
postmodernity especially visible.
MODERN–POSTMODERN 59
• Geographers such as Harvey and Soja have played a key role in seeking to understand the
transition from the modern to the postmodern.
• Both authors conclude that postmodernity is an extension rather than a replacement of
modernism.
• Both insist on joining political and economic analysis to an understanding of cultural and
ideological shifts.
• Both use the debate about whether postmodernity is a distinct epoch to reassert the
importance of space in social theory.
SUMMARY
Method
The third component of modernity and
postmodernity identified by Dear (1994: 3-4)
is that of method. Here, Dear is identifying
different ways of viewing and understanding
the world. As we noted earlier, modernism
grew out of the enlightenment search for order,
rationality and science. Within this search was
a concern for uncovering the universal laws
which underpinned both the physical and
the social worlds. In the physical world,
such universality is more straightforward,
and grand narratives built around a universal
understanding of gravity or evolution or
relativity or nuclear fusion, are commonplace
– if occasionally contested. In matters of the
social world, things are not so straightforward.
The grand social theories of modernism,
however, were conducted as if they were.
Positivism and Marxism took on the character
of ‘metanarratives’, used by their adherents
to explain all kinds of social and economic
behaviour. For the positivists, rational man,
acting to optimize his own individual interests,
provided the foundation for economics and
economic development. For Marxists, class
struggle provided the motor for history and
historical development. The developing
discipline of geography was also enrolled into
this search for universal laws. For some, like
Soja, it responded too enthusiastically, resulting
in what he termed ‘Modern Geography’s
fixation on empirical appearances and
involuted description’ (1989: 51).
Indeed, by the 1960s Human Geography had
embraced a so-called ‘scientific’ approach,
which had as its rationale the search for
universally applicable laws of human behaviour.
People were reduced to little more than dots on
a map or integers in an equation and were all
assumed to operate according to the same
general laws – indeed, it was the very search for
these controlling laws that drove this entire
approach. This kind of reasoning dominated
Human Geography in the 1960s and most of
the 1970s and generated the search for law-like
statements of order and regularity that could
be applied to spatial patterns and processes.
Hence the succession of models that appeared
in geography over this period, for instance,
Christaller’s model of settlement hierarchy,
Alonso’s land use model, Zipf’s rank size rule
of urban populations and Weber’s model of
industrial location. All were an attempt to use
law-like statements in order to explain and
predict the spatial outcomes of human activity.
One such model that Human Geographers
used to explain patterns of flow between two or
more centres was the so-called gravity model.
This proposed that we can estimate the spatial
interaction between two regions by multiplying
together the mass of the two (equated
conveniently with population size) and dividing
it by some function of the distance separating
them. The model was used to ‘explain’ all kinds
of flows, from those of migration to passenger
traffic, telephone conversations and commodity
flows. Noticeable by their absence are any
references to the actual motivations for the
behaviour of the individuals who are migrating
or commuting or speaking to each other on the
phone or purchasing the commodities. The
freedom to choose one’s behaviour is given no
space whatsoever and people’s actions are
assumed to conform to a general pattern, which
is itself based on a model derived from a crude
analogy with Newton’s law of universal
gravitation developed in 1687. Thus what was
originally conceived as a way of accounting for
the behaviour of distant bodies in the universe
was being used to explain a whole host of
social, economic and cultural activities by
reference to the two variables of population and
distance. These, and the relation between them,
were felt to govern, or control, the rate and
nature of population movement.
Postmodernity consciously rejected the
search for universal truths and instead
emphasized that all knowledge is socially
produced by those with particular positions
and particular interests. This led to a strategy
of deconstruction, ‘a mode of critical
interpretation that seeks to demonstrate how
the (multiple) positioning of an author (or
reader) in terms of class, culture, race, gender,
etc., has influenced the writing (and reading)
of a text’ (Johnston et al., 2000: 621). The
outcome was a destabilization of meaning,
which in turn cast doubt on the authority of
those who claimed to be privileged interpreters.
Local knowledges were prioritized alongside
scientific ones, and postmodernism sought to
undermine the modernist belief that theory can
mirror and explain reality. As Dear puts it,
‘more than most, therefore, postmodernists,
learn to contextualise, to tolerate relativism and
to be conscious always of difference’ (1994: 4).
However, critics of postmodernism seized on
such relativism to argue that this amounts to a
kind of ‘anything goes’ academia, where every
single viewpoint is equally valid. Geographers
were again at the forefront of these debates as
they sought to understand how the meanings
and interpretations of all kinds of texts – from
books, to maps, to landscapes – were socially
MARK GOODWIN60
derived and mediated. In the end though it is
worth remembering a warning from Dear, that
‘in our shifting world, postmodern thought
has not removed the necessity for political
and moral judgements: what it has done is
to question the basis for such judgements’
(1994: 4).
MODERN–POSTMODERN 61
• Modernism and postmodernism contain their own ways of viewing and understanding the
world.
• Modernism has tended to search for universal laws, emphasizing rationality and order.
• Postmodernism has tended to emphasize the relative and socially situated basis of all
knowledge claims.
SUMMARY
Conclusions
Geography and geographers have inevitably
been heavily influenced by the social and
cultural movements we know as modernism
and postmodernism, both in terms of what
they have studied and how they have studied it.
Geographers have also played leading roles
in the interpretation of modernity and
postmodernity and especially in analysing
whether we have passed from one to the other.
Putting these two elements together, we can
now see the way in which an explicit concern
with modernity and postmodernity
revolutionized geography in the 1980s and
1990s. It caused geographers to ask all kinds of
questions: about the relationship between the
past and the present; about the relationship
between society and space (see Chapter 2);
about the role of space in social theory and
social change; about diversity and difference,
and how they should be rendered visible (see
Chapters 5 and 6); and about how we represent
and understand different types of meanings and
interpretations (see Chapter 9). In many ways
then, debates around notions of the modern
and the postmodern presaged a flowering of
geographical enquiry and a serious
reintegration of Human Geography into
broader debates within social science and
philosophy. The encounter has undoubtedly
changed Human Geography, but Human
Geographers have also changed our
understandings of what it means to be modern
or postmodern.
1. Choose a geography that is well known to you – for instance, your journey to university,
the place where you live, places you have worked – and see if you can find elements of
modern or postmodern architecture in the built environment.
DISCUSSION POINTS
MARK GOODWIN62
2. Examine a contentious social issue and see how many different interpretations of it you can
establish. Think about why these different voices are there and analyse which ones are most
powerful.
3. Using particular examples, explore the ways in which cultural and economic change are
linked.
4. Do you think modernity has come to an end?
Berman, M. (2010) All That is Solid Melts into Air. London: Verso.
A new edition of a wonderful book which examines the experience of modernity by charting the impact
of modernism on art, literature and architecture.
Harvey, D. (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity. London: Blackwell.
Soja, E. (1989) Postmodern Geographies. London: Verso.
The two books which opened up geography’s engagement with debates around modernity and
postmodernity – and which brought a geographical sensitivity to subsequent debates on these themes.
Le Corbusier (1927) Towards a New Architecture. London: The Architectural Press.
Try to find a copy in a library of this English translation of Le Corbusier’s 1923 classic French text Vers
une Architecture. There is also a new 2008 edition (published by Frances Lincoln Ltd, London) with an
introduction which sets the book in its original context. Read this to understand why modernism gained
such a hold for those seeking to build a new world after the First World War by sweeping away the
disorder and chaos of the old one.
Jencks, C. (2007) Critical Modernism – Where is Post Modernism Going? London: Wiley Academy.
A book by one of the doyens of the postmodern movement which provides an overview of both
postmodernism and its relationship with modernism.
FURTHER READING
Introduction: self-centred
geographies?
Some people say that you should not judge a
book by its cover. However, it is often
interesting to pause and reflect on why books,
organizations or in this case subjects such as
geography are represented by particular ‘cover’
images. Figure 5.1 shows the cover of the 1994
Annual Report of the Royal Geographical
Society, which is the organization representing
academic and non-academic geographers in
Britain. The image was designed to show
geography in a positive light, as a subject that
causes adventurous individuals to embark on
exciting expeditions of learning in which they
can discover the secrets of far-flung places and
understand the lives of exotically different
people. It is the ‘us here’ subjecting the ‘them
there’ to serious geographical scrutiny.
This image, however, unintentionally poses
other questions about ‘us’ and ‘them’. The ‘us’
might suggest that Human Geographers can
somehow be categorized as a homogeneous
group of people, studying our geography in a
somewhat standardized way – a bizarre
supposition on a number of counts, not least
the ‘maleness’ of the encounter that is
represented. The ‘them’ seems to have been
selected on the grounds of their exotic
difference to us. They, too, are in danger of
being stereotyped. The strangeness of the place
along with differences in skin colour, language,
dress and ‘culture’ seem to be sufficient to mark
out an appropriately ‘other’ subject of study.
‘Us’ encountering ‘them’ is on our terms. Exotic
difference is defined by our mapping out of
people and places in the world, and our
assumptions about what is, and what is not, a
normal view of life.
Perhaps these questions read too much from
one particular image, especially since the
RGS/IBG has subsequently sought to rectify in
its output any previous perceptions of social or
cultural insensitivity. However, these questions
do reflect some of the most important themes
to have arisen in Human Geography over
recent years. The first is a highlighting and
questioning of the geographical self. Not so
many years ago, Human Geographers were
taught to be objective in their studies, so that
anyone else tackling the same subject would
come up with the same results. They were,
in effect, being positioned as some kind of
scientific automaton whose background,
identity, experience, personality and worldview
needed to be subjugated to the need for
objectivity. The ‘I’ was personal pronoun
non grata when it came to doing geography.
However, the self does matter, and does
CHAPTER 5
SELF–OTHER
Paul Cloke
PAUL CLOKE64
Figure 5.1 Annual Report of the Royal Geographical Society, 1994. Credit: Royal Geographical Society
(with IBG)
influence the geography we practise. We do
have different place- and people-experiences,
different political and spiritual worldviews,
different aspects to our identity and nature, and
all of these factors will influence how we see the
world, why our geographical imaginations are
fired up by particular issues and, ultimately,
what and how we choose to study.
The danger of not acknowledging and reflecting
on the self is not only that we can unknowingly
buy into other people’s orthodoxies, but also
that we can assume that everyone sees the same
world as we do. We can, thereby, impose our
‘sameness’ on to others. The second set of
questions, then, concerns recognition of how
we deal with ‘others’. It is extraordinarily
difficult sometimes to do anything but see
things from our own perspective, however
hard we try to escape from our self-centred
geographies. Yet as soon as we move beyond
the samenesses of self, we immediately begin
to stylize and stereotype the differences of ‘the
other’. This has been the subject of much
recent questioning across the range of human
sciences, including Human Geography, under
the rubric of debates on ‘Otherness’ and
‘Othering’. How do we think about people
who are not like us without ‘othering’ them,
without prioritizing the self and at best offering
benign tolerance to others (Shurmer-Smith and
Hannam, 1994)? Do we categorize others in
order to control them – socially, culturally,
politically, economically, spatially (Leeuw et al.,
2011)? Do we equate difference with
abnormality or deviance?
Dealing with otherness and difference is
therefore fraught with difficulty, as these are by
no means neutral categories, and any critical
assumptions about them being ‘obvious’ or
even ‘threatening’ require very considerable
reflection. For example, we need to challenge
any assumptions that appropriate dealings with
others are somehow automatically transacted
through our citizenship – both in terms of our
status as ‘citizens’ of Human Geography, which
is somehow already sufficiently attuned to
issues of otherness, and in terms of our statecitizenship
through which it might be thought
that welfare and aid functions already take care
of the need to deal with others. The French
anthropologist Marc Augé has suggested that
we need to adopt a two-pronged approach to
understanding otherness. First, we should seek
a sense for the other. In the same way that we
have a sense of direction, or family, or rhythm,
he argues that we have a sense of otherness,
and he sees this sense both disappearing and
becoming more acute. It is being lost as our
tolerance for others – for difference –
disappears. Yet it is becoming more acute as
that very intolerance itself creates and structures
othernesses such as nationalism, regionalism
and ‘ethnic cleansing’, which involve ‘a kind of
uncontrolled heating up of the processes that
generate otherness’ (Augé, 1998: xv). Second,
we should seek a sense of the other, or a sense of
what has meaning for others; that which they
elaborate upon. This involves listening to other
voices and looking through other windows on
to the world so as to understand some of the
social meanings that are instituted among and
lived out by people within particular social
or identity groups. This combination of an
intellectual understanding of the other and an
emotional, connected and committed sense of
appreciation for the other can perhaps best be
summarized in terms of attempting to achieve
solidarity with the other by participation and
involvement in their worlds. Rather than
converting ‘them’ into ‘our’ world, such
solidarity involves a conversion of ourselves
for the other, hence as I wrote a decade ago:
I believe that any re-radicalized geography
will be measured to some extent by
the degree to which radical and critical
geographers achieve a going beyond the self
SELF–OTHER 65
in order to find a sense for the other in
practices of conversion for the other.
(Cloke, 2004: 101)
As the remainder of this chapter suggests, the
attempt to inculcate the curricula and research
of Human Geography with senses of the other,
and with reflections on the self, has proved to
be a complex and politicized process. Perhaps
this reflects less the novelty of the ideas being
worked with than the way they speak to and
critique an absolutely central concern of
Human Geography: developing knowledge
of people and places beyond those one already
knows. This chapter argues that this critique is
worthwhile, and therefore discusses some of the
delights, as well as difficulties, of bringing
explicit reflections of self and other into our
Human Geographies.
Self-reflections
In many ways, ‘reflexivity’ has become one
of the most significant passwords in Human
Geography over recent years. To reflect on the
self in relation to space and society has been
seen as a key with which to open up new
kinds of Human Geographies that relate to
individuals more closely, and that individuals
can relate to more closely. In particular,
reflexivity has been used by feminist and postcolonial
geographers in their respective political
projects to persuade Human Geographers to
reflect something other than male, white
orthodoxies. A poem by Clare Madge (see Case
Study box opposite) urges geography to connect
‘in here’ rather than ‘out there’ by becoming a
subject ‘on my terms and in my terms’.
Her frustration with the subject is echoed in
the book Feminist Geographies (Women and
Geography Study Group, 1997) where the
writing (usually by men) in geography is
critiqued, but the problems of proposing
alternative forms of writing (usually by women)
are starkly acknowledged:
Much academic writing . . . is characterized
by a dispassionate, distant, disembodied
narrative voice, one which is devoid of
emotion and dislocated from the personal.
In contrast to this, writing which is personal,
emotional, angry or explicitly embodied is
implicitly (and often explicitly) portrayed as
its antithesis: something which (maybe) has
a place in the world of fiction and/or creative
writing, but which, quite definitely, is out
of place in the academic world . . . to be
masculine often means not to be emotional
or passionate, not to be explicit about your
values, your background, your own felt
experiences. Feminist academics wishing to
challenge those exclusions from the written
voice of Geography find themselves in a
dilemma, however, for if academic
masculinity is dispassionately rational and
neutral, writing which is overly emotional
or explicitly coming from a particular
personalized position is often dismissed as
irrational, as too emotional, as too personal
– as too feminine, in other words. Thus
feminists who want to assert the importance
of the emotional in their work, or feminists
who want to acknowledge the personal
particularities of their analysis, run the
risk of being read as incapable of rational
writing, of merely being emotional women
whose work cannot be universally relevant.
Women and Geography
Study Group, 1997: 23)
It has therefore been important for Human
Geographers not only to theorize the self in new
ways, but also to position the self appropriately
in the practising of Human Geography, such
that knowledge is situated in the conscious
and subconscious subjectivities of both the
author/researcher and the subjects of writing
and research. In terms of new ways of
PAUL CLOKE66
SELF–OTHER 67
Clare Madge: An Ode to Geography
Geography,
What are you?
What makes you?
Whose knowledge do you represent?
Whose ‘reality’ do you reflect?
Geography,
You are not just space ‘out there’
To be explored, mined, colonised.
You are also space ‘in here’
The space within and between
That binds and defines and differentiates us as people.
Geography,
I want you to become a subject
On my terms and in my terms,
Delighting and exploring
The subtleties and inconsistencies
Of the world in which we live.
The world of pale moonlight and swaying trees in a bluebell wood.
The world of sand and bone and purple terror.
The world of bright lights flying past factory, iron and engine.
The world of jasmine scents and delicate breeze.
The world of subversion, ambiguity and resistance.
The world of head proud, shoulders defiant under the gaze of cold eyes laying bare the
insecurity underlying prejudice.
The world of music, laughter and light,
Of torment and exploding violence
Of tar and steel strewn with hate
While the moon gently observes and heals.
Geography, could you be my world?
Will you ever have the words, concepts and theories
To encapsulate
The precarious, exhilarating, exquisite, unequal world in which we live?
I believe so.
By looking within and without, upside down and inside out,
Come alive geography, come alive!
(Women and Geography Study Group, 1997)
CASE STUDY
theorizing the self, Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift
(1995) discuss four interconnected ideas that
map out the territory of the human subject:
1. The body: orders our access to and mobility
in spaces and places; interfaces with
technology and machinery; encapsulates our
experiences of the world around us; harbours
unconscious desires, vulnerabilities,
alienations and fragmented aspects of self, as
well as expressions of sexuality and gender;
and is a site of cultural consumption where
choices of food and clothing and jewellery,
for example, will inscribe meanings about
the person.
2. The self: can be understood in a variety of
ways, ranging from a personal identity
formed by an ongoing series of experiences
and relationships, but where there is no
distinctive characteristic in these experiences
and relationships to suppose an inner, fixed
personality, to a personal identity in which
self-awareness serves to characterize each
experience as belonging to a distinct self.
3. The person: a description of the cultural
framework of the self and allows for different
selves in different frameworks. For example,
if you were born and brought up in Rwanda,
Albania or Cuba, your person would reflect
the cultural frameworks of life in those
places.
4. Identity: where the person is located within
social structures with which they identify.
Traditionally this would have been seen to
involve rigid structures such as class and
family, but more recently identities have
tended to be constructed reflexively and
therefore often flexibly leading to new
identity issues – for example, focusing on
alternative sexualities, ethnicities or
resistance to local change.
The subject is therefore ‘in some ways
detachable, reversible and changeable’, while in
other ways it is ‘fixed, solid and dependable’. It
is certainly ‘located in, with and by power,
knowledge and social relationships’ (1995: 12).
Some of these theoretical distinctions may at
first be difficult to grasp, but they do serve
to emphasize just how difficult it actually
is to be reflexive about the self in our Human
Geography. To what extent is it possible to
know and to reflect on our selves, to appreciate
fully how, precisely, the self is responsible for
how we think, how our imaginations are
prompted, how we interpret places, people and
events, and so on? How much more difficult is
it to understand the selves of others whom we
might wish to study? These practices, which
I have identified earlier as being important
political and personal projects in Human
Geography, are perhaps more difficult than
they first appear. The multidimensionality of
the body, the relationally dependent and often
subconscious nature of the self, the culturally
framed (and therefore flexible) person and the
changeable and overlapping influences of
identity render reflexivity a most complex,
and some would say impossible, task. Indeed
a whole new angle on Human Geography –
non-representational theory (see Thrift, 2007;
Anderson and Harrison, 2010a) has sprung up
in which the focus has switched specifically to
non-reflexive accounts of human being and
becoming in which the instinctive, habitual
and performative are emphasized.
Nevertheless, the breaking down of detached
and personally irrelevant orthodoxies in
Human Geography has remained a task that
many continue to consider sufficiently
worthwhile to warrant attempts to bring
reflexivity into a prominent position in the
practice of Human Geography. Three
interconnected and often overlapping strategies
are briefly outlined here. First, a strategy
of positionality can be identified in which
‘telling where you are coming from’ can be
employed tactically as a contextualization of
PAUL CLOKE68
the interpretations that are to follow (see
Browne et al., 2010). Sometimes this involves
the identification of key political aspects of the
self, for example, a feminist positioning, which
will self-evidently influence what occurs
subsequently and which provides us with new
positions from which to speak. On other
occasions, particular spatial or social
experiences will be described that are used
to claim expertise or insight into particular
situations. Take, for example, George Carney’s
autobiographical preface to Baseball, Barns
and Bluegrass, his book on the geography of
American folklife. Here, he describes his
childhood in the foothills of the Ozarks, and
how the folk knowledge accumulated during
that time has been translated into a scholarly
pursuit of cultural tactics of American folklife
more generally. Not only does his folk heritage
equip him for this work, but it also punctuates
what he writes and how he writes it.
Second, a more radical strategy of
autoethnography can be pursued involving
different kinds of self-narrative that use the
perspective of self-involvement to produce
wider understandings of different kinds of
social contexts. Autoethnography represents
one significant way of both presenting the ‘self
to self’, and presenting the ‘self to others’, and
takes a number of forms (see Butz and Besio,
2009), including:
• analysing our own biographies in order
to interrogate and illuminate wider
phenomena
• reflective narratives on empirical or
ethnographic encounters
• responses from subaltern groups to their
representation by others
• ‘indigenous’ ethnographies from members of
subordinated groups who take on academic
positions from which to speak
• other forms of ‘insider’ research, often
involving participant observation, witnessing
and testimony (see Kindon, 2010;
Dewsbury, 2009).
Autoethnography opens up intriguing
possibilities for studying, for example, our
gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, sense of place,
and also our work, leisure, tourism and other
activity geographies through the medium of
our personal involvement. At the same time it
is important to recognize the challenges
inherent in these approaches, including: the
difficulties of knowing the self well enough,
especially given its dynamic and multi-faced
nature; the risk of self-obsession and
consequent failure to communicate with others;
the dangers inherent in presenting what are
perhaps sensitive self-narratives to others
who may be in positions of power and/or
judgement; and the problematic task of shaping
our self-representations to different audiences.
Butz and Besio (2009) argue that these
challenges resonate with the need for what
they call autoethnographic sensibility, involving
efforts to:
• perceive ourselves as an inevitable part of
what is being researched and signified
• understand research subjects as
autoethnographers in their own right
• interconnect self-narratives with the
contexts, narratives and voices of others in
any particular network of social relations.
Even with autoethnography, then, there are
strong arguments for including ‘other’ voices in
our own stories.
A third strategy therefore is to acknowledge
intertextuality in our practice of Human
Geography, by finding ways of recognizing
the significance of our selves as important
influences that shape our geographies, while at
the same time seeking to listen to other voices.
The texts that result from such encounters are
complex dialogues. The Human Geographer
will shape the conversation, both by the
SELF–OTHER 69
PAUL CLOKE70
George Carney’s autobiographical preface
The first eighteen years of my life were spent on a 320-acre farm in Deer Creek Township,
Henry County, Missouri, some six miles south of Calhoun (population 350), ten miles northwest
of Tightwad (population 50), and five miles west of Thrush (population 4). My parents, Josh
and Aubertine, inherited the acreage and farmstead buildings from my grandpa and grandma
Carney, who retired and moved to Calhoun. The eighty acres to the north of the farmstead
consisted of hardwood timber (walnut, hickory, and oak), Minor Creek, which flowed in an
easterly direction as a tributary to Tebo Creek, and some patches of grazing land. The
remaining 240 acres, south of the farmstead, were relatively rich farmland where my Dad
planted and harvested a variety of crops ranging from corn and soybeans to alfalfa and oats.
Classified as a diversified farmer, he also raised beef and dairy cattle, hogs, sheep, and
chickens. Thus, my roots lay in a rural, agrarian way of life in the foothills of the Ozarks.
My early years fit the description that is often used to define the folk – a rural people who live
a simple way of life, largely unaffected by changes in society, and who retain traditional
customs and beliefs developed within a strong family structure. I was experiencing the folklife
of the Ozarks. Folklife includes objects that we can see and touch (tangible items), such as
food (Mom’s home-made yeast rolls) and buildings (Dad’s smokehouse). It also consists of other
traditions that we cannot see or touch (intangible elements), such as beliefs and customs
(Grandpa Whitlow’s chaw of tobacco poultice used to ease the pain of a honeybee sting).
Both aspects of folklife, often referred to as material and nonmaterial culture, are learned orally
as they are passed down from one generation to the next – such as Grandpa Carney teaching
me to use a broad axe – or they may be learned from a friend or neighbor – for example,
Everett Monday, a neighbor, instructing me on the techniques of playing a harmonica.
Through this oral process, I learned many of the traditional ways from the folk who surrounded
my everyday life – parents, relatives, friends, neighbors, teachers, preachers, and merchants.
The most vivid memories associated with my early life among the Ozark folk are the six folklife
traits selected for this anthology – architecture, food and drink, religion, music, sports, and
medicine.
Since leaving the Ozarks for the Oklahoma plains some thirty-five years ago, I have developed
a greater awareness and deeper appreciation for American folklife and all its spatial
manifestations. My teaching and research interests have been strongly influenced by those folk
experiences of yesteryear. Students in my introductory culture geography classes are annually
given a heavy dose of lectures and slides on the folklife traits covered in this reader. My
research has increasingly focused on two of these traits – music and architecture. Clearly, my
roots have made a lasting impression – one that I have converted into a scholarly pursuit.
(Carney, 1998: xv–xxii)
CASE STUDY
individuality of their own subject-experience
and by the questions that are asked of the
‘other’. In turn, other individuals will have
different, changing and even competing
experiences and will represent themselves
differently to different people. The ‘results’ of
the encounter will usually be ‘interpreted’ by
the Human Geographer in the light of their
self-positioning. This may involve a process
of ‘finding new places to speak from’, and
bringing them into the conversation, or it may
involve a tactic of ‘letting people speak for
themselves’ and seeking for a plurality of voices
(a ‘polyphony’) to emerge. Interpretations are
then usually written down, often using quoted
extracts of other voices, but almost always
with the author in control, exerting power
over what is included and excluded, what is
contextualized and how, and what storylines are
used to shape the narrative of the ‘findings’. In
all these processes and practices, the need to
recognize the interconnections between the
powerful self and the ‘subjected to’ other is
paramount.
The increasing use of ethnographic strategies
and qualitative methods in Human Geography
(see Cloke et al., 2004; Crang and Cook, 2007)
has certainly helped to provide research
practices with which we can be more reflexive
about our selves, and the relationships between
our selves and others. In the end, however, we
have to realize just how ‘easy’ it can become
to think and write about ourselves, and how
difficult it is to know enough about our selves
to be reflexive in our geographies. Delvings
into psychoanalysis (Sibley, 1995) have begun
to help our understandings here but there
still seems to be an inbuilt desire to empower
the self over the other, however much a
many-voiced, polyphonic geography is being
aimed at. In the more general context of the
problems in the world, such preoccupations
with the self might be regarded as
inappropriate, if not positively dangerous!
SELF–OTHER 71
• Reflexivity – reflecting on the self in relation to society and space – is an essential process
in recognizing how our individualities contribute to all aspects of our practice of Human
Geography. It also gives us grounds on which to challenge seemingly ‘orthodox’
geographies and to make our Human Geography more relevant to us and to others.
• The difficulties involved in understanding the self are often underestimated. The human
subject is a complex mix of body, self, person and identity, and for some, spirit and soul
will also be important considerations.
• There is an interconnected range of strategies by which the self can consciously be included
in the practice of Human Geography.
• The dangers of exaggerating the self in our reading, thinking, researching and writing about
Human Geography are very real and can divert us from important issues relating to others.
SUMMARY
Sensing the other
John Paul Jones (2010, 43) argues that ‘a
central problem in social geography is how to
sort out relations between identity, on the one
hand, and space on the other, particularly
in terms of how their interplay affects the
well-being of people and the prospects of the
places they inhabit and move through.’ It is
important, therefore, to take serious notice
of different kinds of people who are situated in
different kinds of spaces and places, and who
experience, mould and negotiate these spaces
and places in a different way to ourselves.
This interest in the differences of the other
has implications for the ways in which we
conceptualize and practise our Human
Geographies, and also for the ways in which
these geographies are politicized. Dealing with
the ‘other’ is of course linked to dealing with
the ‘self’. To reiterate, the arrogance of the self
is often manifest in an assumption that others
must see the world in the same way as we do.
Alternatively, we will often place ourselves in
the centre of some ‘mainstream’ identity that is
defined not only around our self-characteristics
but also in opposition to others who are not
the same as us. Think, for example, about the
way white people often assume that only
‘non-white’ people have an ethnicity and
find their own whiteness unremarkable.
As Chris Philo has suggested, then, we are
often ‘locked into the thought-prison of
“the same”’ (1997: 22), which makes it
impossible for us to appreciate the workings
of the other. Indeed we will often seek either
to incorporate the other into our sameness,
or to exclude the other from our sameness, in
order to cope with the threat that difference
seems to present to the perceived mainstream
nature of our identity (see Sibley, 1995).
Both incorporation and exclusion are highly
political acts that trap the other in the logic
of the same.
The interest in recognizing ‘other’ Human
Geographies focuses attention not only on
that which is remote to us, but also should
make us rethink what is close to home. Two
examples serve here to highlight some of
the principal themes in the recognition of
otherness in proximal and remote situations.
The first relates to the neglect of ‘other’
geographies close to home and focuses on
rural geographies (see Chapter 48), although
the principles involved relate to a wide range
of Human Geography contexts. Philo’s
(1992) review of ‘other’ rural geographies
emphasized that most accounts of rural life
have viewed the mainstream interconnections
between culture and rurality through the
lens of typically white, male, middle-class
narratives:
there remains a danger of portraying British
rural people . . . as all being ‘Mr Averages’, as
being men in employment, earning enough
to live, white and probably English, straight
and somehow without sexuality, able in body
and sound in mind, and devoid of any other
quirks of (say) religious belief or political
affiliation.
(Philo, 1992: 200)
Such a list is important in its highlighting
of neglect for others, but also runs the risk of
immediately producing a formulaic view
of what is other. Thus, we can recognize
that individuals and groups of people can be
marginalized from a sense of belonging to, and
in, the rural on the grounds of their gender,
age, class, sexuality, disability, and so on.
However, as David Bell and Gill Valentine
(1995b) remind us, the mere listing of
socio-cultural variables represents neither a
commitment to deal seriously with the issues
involved nor a complete sense of the range of
other geographies. Indeed, our very recognition
of these others serves to ‘other’ different others
and exclude them from view.
PAUL CLOKE72
A specific illustration within this rural
context is offered in Figure 5.2, which presents
a well-known self-portrait by the photographer
Ingrid Pollard (see Kinsman, 1995). Her
autobiographical notes suggest that the
photograph is a self-aware comment on
race, representation and the British landscape.
She sets herself in the countryside, and
through juxtaposing her identity as a ‘black
photographer’ with the cultural construction of
landscape and rurality as an idyll-ized space
of white heartland, she graphically expresses a
sense of her own unease, dread, non-belonging
– of other. The black presence in ‘our’ green
and pleasant land says much about whiteness =
sameness in this content. However, as the
Women and Geography Study Group (1997)
point out, the otherness in this representation is
by no means a unidimensional matter of race.
They suggest that:
Pollard is claiming a different position
from which to look at and enjoy English
landscapes (albeit an uneasy pleasure);
a right to be there and a right to be
represented and make representations. She
challenges, disrupts and complicates the
notion of a generalisable set of shared ideas
about England and the implicitly white and
masculinised position from which it is
usually viewed.
(1997: 185–6)
Ingrid Pollard the ‘black woman photographer’,
then, exposes another critical edge of
otherness in this content and clearly the
multidimensional nature of identity is by
no means exhausted by these labels. In our
seemingly known worlds, therefore, we make
assumptions about the nature of people and
places; about who belongs where, and who
doesn’t fit into the sameness of our mainstream;
about who, what, where and when is other.
The second illustration is even better known
within Human Geography, having achieved
SELF–OTHER 73
Figure 5.2 ‘Pastoral
Interlude’ (1988) ‘. . .
it’s as if the Black
experience is only ever
lived within the urban
environment. I thought I
liked the Lake District;
where I wandered
lonely as a Black face
in a sea of white. A
visit to the countryside
is always accompanied
by a feeling of unease;
dread . . . feeling I
don’t belong. Walks
through leafy glades
with a baseball bat by
my side . . .’ Credit:
Ingrid Pollard. Courtesy
of the artist.
almost cult status in attempts to formulate
post-colonial approaches to the subject. Edward
Said is Professor of English and Comparative
Literature at Columbia University in the USA.
He is a Palestinian, born in Jerusalem and
educated in Egypt and America, who is most
famous for his analysis of the way the West
imagines the Orient or East (including the
Arabic Middle East) as different to itself
(for a review of these and other ‘imaginative
geographies’ see Chapter 16). In his classic
book Orientalism (1978; 1995) Said traces how
the Arab world has come to be imagined,
represented and constructed in terms of its
otherness to Europe:
the French and the British – less so the
Germans, Russians, Spanish, Portuguese,
Italians and Swiss – have had a long
tradition of what I shall be calling
Orientalism, a way of coming to terms
with the Orient that is based on the
Orient’s special place in European Western
experience. The Orient is not only adjacent
to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s
greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the
source of its civilization and languages, its
cultural contestant, and one of its deepest
and most recurring images of the other.
(1995: 1)
Representations of the romantic, mystical
Orient, he argues, act as a container for
western desires and fantasies that cannot be
accommodated within the boundaries of what
is normal in the West. Yet at the same time,
representations of the cruel, detached and
money-grabbing nature of the Oriental Arab
serve to underline the assumed hegemony
of the West over political–economic and
socio-cultural norms:
Arabs, for example, are thought of as
camel-riding, terroristic, hook-nosed,
venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an
affront to real civilisation. Always there lurks
the assumption that although the Western
consumer belongs to a numerical minority,
he is entitled either to own or to expend (or
both) the majority of the world’s resources
. . . a white middle-class westerner believes it
his human prerogative not only to manage
the non-white world but also to own it, just
because by definition ‘it’ is not quite as
human as ‘we’ are.
(Said, 1995: 108)
Through the process of Orientalism, the
societies and cultures concerned are
marginalized, devalued and insulted, while the
imperialism and moral superiority of the West
PAUL CLOKE74
Figure 5.3 A guard with a zither player in an
interior, by Ludwig Deutsch (1855–1935). The
illustration was used on the cover of Edward Said’s
Orientalism, 1995. Credit: Christie’s Images/The
Bridgeman Art Library
are legitimized. Said’s contestation of the
othering of Orientalism points the way for
wide-ranging inquiry by Human Geographers
into how different people and places are
similarly othered. It also shows us that at the
heart of what we take to be familiar, natural, at
home, actually lurk all kinds of relations and
positionings to that which is unfamiliar, strange
and uncanny (Bernstein, 1992).
From these illustrations it becomes clear
that whether otherness is close to home or
positioned in some far-off exotic space, it is
often difficult to detach ourselves, both
conceptually and empirically from a frame of
study that validates the self, the same and the
familiar as waymarkers for the understanding
of others. Two sets of issues arise from this
conclusion. First, there is a need to think
through much more deeply about what
constitutes otherness in Human Geographical
study, otherwise our main contribution may
only be to further emphasize the othernesses
that are reinforced by such study. At one level,
this requires a grasp of the multidimensional
nature of identity. As Mike Crang (1998a)
puts it:
very few people are the ‘same’ as others –
everyone is different in some respects. The
most we could say is that certain groups
share certain things in common, so who is
counted as part of a group or excluded from
it will depend on which things are chosen as
being significant . . . Belonging in a group
depends on which of all the possible
characteristics are chosen as ‘defining’
membership. The characteristics that have
been treated as definitive vary over space and
time with significant political consequences
attached to deciding what defines belonging.
(1998a: 60)
We need to recognize, therefore, that ‘same’ and
‘other’ identities are:
• Contingent – in that differences which
define them are a part of an open and
ongoing series of social processes.
• Differentiated – in that individuals and
groups of people will occupy positions along
many separate lines of difference at the same
time
• Relational – in that the social construction
of difference is always in terms of the
presence of some opposing movement.
(Jones and Moss, 1995)
Even with greater sensitivity for other
identities, we are usually still trapped in a
concern for what Marcus Doel (1994) calls
‘the Other of the Same’ – that is, we translate
othernesses into our language, our conceptual
frameworks, our categories of thought, and
thereby effectively obscure the other with the
familiarities of the samenesses of our self. The
real difficulty, then, is to find ways of accessing
‘the Other of the Other’ – that is, the
unfamiliar, unexpected, unexplainable other
that defies our predictive, analytical and
interpretative powers and our socio-cultural
positionings.
The second set of issues relates to the methods
we employ in order to encounter ‘others’.
As with our self-reflections, the increasing
use of ethnographic and qualitative methods
is important to this project. However,
researching the other through ethnography
takes a long time. Drawing lessons from
anthropology, we would have to conclude that
to carry out appropriate studies of unknown
peoples and worlds can take several years.
Consider, for example, the account of French
anthropologist Pierre Clastres (1998), who
spent two years with so-called ‘savage’ tribes
of Indians in Paraguay in the 1960s. He
acknowledges that even ‘being there’ with his
research subjects did not break down the very
considerable barriers of communication and
cross-referenced understanding, until
SELF–OTHER 75
circumstances changed many months into his
research. Even over this timescale it proved
difficult to form a bridge between himself
(and here we might wonder whether his
concept of ‘savages’ got in the way of effective
communication) and the mythologies,
embodiments and social practices that lay at
the heart of the very existence of the Guayaki
Indians (see Case Study box).
PAUL CLOKE76
Pierre Clastres: Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians
They really were savages, especially the Iroiangi. They had only been in contact with the white
man’s world for a few months, and that contact had for the most part been limited to dealings
with one Paraguayan. What made them seem like savages? It was not the strangeness of their
appearance – their nudity, the length of their hair, their necklaces of teeth – nor the chanting of
the men at night, for I was charmed by all this; it was just what I had come for. What made
them seem like savages was the difficulty I had in getting through to them: my timid and
undoubtedly naive efforts to bridge the enormous gap I felt to exist between us were met by the
Atchei with total, discouraging indifference, which made it seem impossible for us ever to
understand one another. For example, I offered a machete to a man sitting under his shelter of
palm leaves sharpening an arrow. He hardly raised his eyes; he took it calmly without showing
the least surprise, examined the blade, felt the edge, which was rather dull since the tool was
brand-new, and then laid it down beside him and went on with his work. There were other
Indians nearby; no one said a word.
Disappointed, almost irritated, I went away,
and only then did I hear some brief
murmuring: no doubt they were commenting
on the present. It would certainly have been
presumptuous of me to expect a bow in
exchange, the recitation of a myth, or status
as a relative! Several times I tried out the little
Guayaki I knew on the Iroiangi. I had noticed
that, although their language was the same
as that of the Atchei Gatu, they spoke it
differently: their delivery seemed much faster,
and their consonants tended to disappear in
the flow of the vowels, so that I could not
recognize even the words I knew –
I therefore did not understand much of what
they said.
But it also seemed to me that they were
intentionally disagreeable. For example, I
CASE STUDY
Figure 5.4 Jyvukugi, chief of the Atchei Gatu.
Credit: Pierre Clastres
SELF–OTHER 77
asked a young man a question that I knew was not indiscreet, since the Atchei Gatu had
already answered it freely: ‘Ava ro nde apa? Who is your father?’ He looked at me. He could
not have been amazed by the absurdity of the question, and he must have understood me (I
had been careful to articulate clearly and slowly). He simply looked at me with a slightly bored
expression and did not answer. I wanted to be sure I had pronounced everything correctly.
I ran off to look for an Atchei Gatu and asked him to repeat the question; he formulated it
exactly the way I had a few minutes earlier, and yet the Iroiangi answered him. What could I
do? Then I remembered what Alfred Métraux had said to me not long before: ‘For us to be
able to study a primitive society, it must already be starting to disintegrate.’
I was faced with a society that was still green, so to speak, at least in the case of the Iroiangi,
even though circumstances had obliged the tribe to live in a ‘Western’ area (but in some
sense, wasn’t their recent move to Arroyo Moroti more a result of a voluntary collective
decision than a reaction to intolerable outside pressure?). Hardly touched, hardly contaminated
by the breezes of our civilization – which were fatal for them – the Atchei could keep the
freshness and tranquillity of their life in the forest intact: this freedom was temporary and
doomed not to last much longer, but it was quite sufficient for the moment; it had not been
damaged, and so the Atchei’s culture would not insidiously and rapidly decompose. The
society of the Atchei Iroiangi was so healthy that it could not enter into a dialogue with me,
with another world. And for this reason the Atchei accepted gifts that they had not asked for
and rejected my attempts at conversation because they were strong enough not to need it: we
would begin to talk only when they became sick.
Old Paivagi died in June 1963; he certainly believed that he had no more reason to remain in
the world of the living. In any case, he was the oldest of the Atchei Gatu, and because of his
age (he must have been over seventy) I was often eager to ask him about the past. He was
usually quite willing to engage in these conversations but only for short periods, after which he
would grow tired and shut himself up in his thoughts again. One evening when he was getting
ready to go to sleep beside his fire, I went and sat down next to him. Evidently he did not
welcome my visit at all, because he murmured softly and unanswerably: ‘Cho ro tuja praru.
Nde ro mita kyri wyte. I am a weak old man. You are still a soft head, you are still a baby.’
He had said enough; I left Paivagi to poke his fire and went back to my own, somewhat
upset, as one always is when faced with the truth.
This was what made the Atchei savages: their savagery was formed of silence; it was a
distressing sign of their last freedom, and I too wanted to deprive them of it. I had to bargain
with death; with patience and cunning, using a little bribery (offers of presents and food, all
sorts of friendly gestures, and gentle, even unctuous language), I had to break through the
Strangers’ passive resistance, interfere with their freedom, and make them talk. It took me about
five months to do it, with the help of the Atchei Gatu.
We need to acknowledge just how difficult it is
to form a bridge between ourselves and the
complicated essential existences of others,
whether far off or close to home. It can be
argued that the pressure to publish in the
contemporary academy has run the risk of too
many ‘quickie’ ethnographies of othered
subjects. As with the Guayaki, an appreciation
of the other geographies and experiences of, say,
homeless people in a city like Bristol require
long-term commitment rather than brief
encounters. Only by reconceptualizing
otherness, and reviewing the quality of our
encounters with it, are Human Geographers
likely to become any more attuned to a sense
for the other and a sense of the other as
suggested by Augé at the beginning of this
chapter.
PAUL CLOKE78
• Sensing the other is inextricably linked with understanding the self. By assuming that others
are somehow the same as us, we can be locked into the ‘thought prison’ of the same,
which makes it impossible to sense the other appropriately.
• Geographies of other people and places can be close to home or in far-off exotic worlds.
In either case, Human Geographers should see themselves as observers who are situated
within the objects and worlds of their observation.
• At the heart of what we take to be familiar, natural and belonging lurk all kinds of relations
and positionings with that other that is unfamiliar, strange and uncanny.
• There is a need to think through much more deeply what constitutes otherness in Human
Geography. It is usually very difficult to bridge over between self and other.
• There is also a need to avoid methodological shortcuts in encounters with others.
SUMMARY
Conclusion
This discussion of the interconnections of self
and other raises a number of important issues
about our Human Geographies. First, there is
the risk that in acknowledging our selves in our
work, we become too self-centred and too little
concerned with political and other priorities in
the world around us. Second, there is the
potential for losing our sense of otherness.
Third, there is the conceptual and
methodological complexity involved in
encountering the other of the same, let alone
the other of the other. Finally, there a concern
over the way in which we can sometimes
privilege certain kinds of otherness without
giving due attention to the need for sustained,
empathetic and contextualized research under
appropriate ethical conditions. There can be a
tendency to ‘flit in and flit out’ of intellectually
groovy subjects, with the danger that research
becomes mere tourism or voyeurism of the
subjects concerned.
When we have negotiated these tricky
questions, there is one further important issue
of self–other interrelations to resolve. In the
words of Derek Gregory, ‘By what right and on
whose authority does one claim to speak for
those “others”? On whose terms is a space
created in which “they” are called upon to
speak? How are they (and we) interpellated?’
(1994: 205).
In seeking to encounter the stories of other
people and worlds, is it inevitable that we
become mere tourists, burdened by the
authority of our selves and the power of our
authorship? Or are there ways in which we can
be sufficiently sensitive about the positionality
and intertextuality of our authorship that we
can legitimately seek to understand and write
about the stories of others, without polluting
them with our voyeuristic or touristic
tendencies, the exclusionary power of which are
so graphically illustrated in Figure 5.5? I believe
that in this we can learn much from Gregory’s
emphatic and optimistic answer:
Most of us have not been very good at
listening to others and learning from them,
but the present challenge is surely to find
ways of comprehending those other worlds –
including our relations with them and our
responsibilities toward them – without being
invasive, colonizing and violent . . . we need
to learn how to reach beyond particularities,
to speak of larger questions without
diminishing the significance of the places
and the people to which they are
accountable. In so doing, in enlarging and
examining our geographical imaginations,
we might come to realise not only that our
lives are ‘radically entwined with the lives of
distant strangers’ but also that we bear a
continuing and unavoidable responsibility
for their needs in times of distress more.
(Gregory, 1994: 205)
In this agenda lies a pathway towards more
sensitive and meaningful engagements of self
and other in Human Geography.
SELF–OTHER 79
Figure 5.5
The power to exclude
when engaging in
touristic or voyeuristic
geographies. Credit:
Mikkel Ostergaard/
Panos Pictures
PAUL CLOKE80
Butz, D. and Besio, K. (2009) Autoethnography. Geography Compass, 3, 1660–74
Ellis, C. and Bochner, A. (2000) Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: researcher as subject.
In: N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research, London: Sage.
Pile, S. and Thrift, N. (eds.) (1995) Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation.
London: Routledge.
These offer comprehensive discussions of subjectivity and self and ethnography and self.
Cloke, P. (2004) Deliver us from evil? Prospects for living ethically and acting politically in Human
Geography. In: P. Cloke, P. Crang and M. Goodwin (eds.), Envisioning Human Geographies. London:
Arnold, 210–28.
Ruddick, S. (2004) Activist geographies: building possible worlds. In: P. Cloke, P. Crang and M.
Goodwin (eds.), Envisioning Human Geographies. London: Arnold, 229–41.
Smith, D. (2004) Morality ethics and social justice. In: P. Cloke, P. Crang and M. Goodwin (eds.),
Envisioning Human Geographies. London: Arnold, 195–209.
These present a series of manifestos on how to develop ethical Human Geographies.
Cloke, P., Cook, I., Crang, P., Goodwin, M., Painter, J. and Philo, C. (2004) Practising Human
Geography. London: Sage.
Crang, M. and Cook, I. (2007) Doing Ethnographies. London: Sage.
Further commentary on ethnography and qualitative methodologies in Human Geography.
FURTHER READING
1. What aspects of your self are significant in shaping your Human Geography? How do you
know?
2. To what extent does non-representational theory involve a complete rethink of the self?
3. How is it possible for researchers to represent the other when they are ‘so thoroughly
saturated with the ideological baggage of their own culture’ (Ley and Mountz, 2001)?
4. To what extent is the distinction between the self and the other crude and oversimplified,
given that identity is ‘always stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with
another to see together without claiming to be another’ (Haraway, 1996)?
5. What evidence do you see in contemporary Human Geography of an emotional,
connected and committed sense of the other?
DISCUSSION POINTS