Transcript Slide 1

Theorizing the Potentials and Possibilities
of Social and Spatial Life
Barney Warf
Dept. of Geography
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306 USA
[email protected]
How has social theory reframed the
ontology of social life, i.e., what we take
to be “real?”
contingency
time & space
I. A Critique
Modernist social science has long been
plagued by determinist teleology:
“A theory that events can only be
accounted for as stages in the movement
towards a pre-ordained end.”
Examples of teleological approaches:
Hegel
Marx
Weber & Parsonian functionalism
Modernization theory
Neoliberal globalization
Modernist or teleological accounts portray
space as a smooth, “given” surface.
Spatial differences are represented as
temporal ones (stages, eras, etc.):
e.g., in modernization theory, beyond
Europe is “before” Europe.
Social science has recently jettisoned
teleological conceptions as a limited
power/knowledge configuration.
Teleologies naturalize social relations
but are themselves projects with
discursive geographical imaginations.
Teleologies deny contingency and human
consciousness, reducing people to finders
of a world already made, and thus
fetishize social structures.
Teleology is the language of domination,
of views that justify the status quo by
presenting it as the only possible outcome
of the past.
By obscuring the contingent nature of
social life, teleologies present time and
space as containers that “hold” society
but are not produced by it.
Euclidean, Cartesian surfaces portray
space as static, geography as territory.
Although time and space appear as
“natural” presocial categories, they are
in fact social constructs.
Epistemologically, teleological views draw
a line between the potential and the real,
the possible and the impossible,
the contingent and the necessary,
what was and what might have been,
what occurred empirically and what could
have occurred theoretically.
The equation real = empirical is
essentially an empiricist or positivist
perspective.
II. An Alternative
Contemporary social theory emphasizes
the contingency of social life:
“the possibility of multiple outcomes
derived from similar causal processes
due to the complexity of social relations
embedded in spatially differentiated
contexts” (Jones & Hanham 1995).
Contingency can denote accident or chance,
indeterminacy and unpredictability, or
opposition to all-determining forces.
Contingent models describe both how the
world is and how it might be.
To ignore contingency is to assume that
historical outcomes are also logical
necessities.
To incorporate contingency is to
acknowledge situated human agency is
all its phenomenological complexity.
The body
Sensation,
perception,
cognition
Language
Identity and
ideology
Every human creation embodies
consciousness and intentionality.
When people construct time and space,
they do so remembering the past and
anticipating the future.
-> alternative possibilities are built
into the very fabric of social reality.
Marx, the bee, and the architect.
Giddens’ structuration theory:
In forming their biographies everyday,
people unintentionally reproduce and
transform their social worlds.
As knowledgeable agents, people always
have the power to do “otherwise.”
-> To know a society and its geography
is to know how it could be different.
Social systems are neither “lawed” in the
sense of being totally determined, nor
“lawless” in the sense of being random
or chaotic.
Structuration allows for historicallyspecific mixtures of determination and
chance, with limited possibilities of
prediction.
Even in the natural sciences, contingency
has become increasingly popular.
Stephen Gould’s study of Canada’s Burgess
shale sketched 7 alternative possible
evolutionary worlds.
Chaos theory, complexity theory, and
complex adaptive systems reveal that the
“arrow of time” is irreversible, not
unidirectional, and that causality can
never be separated from context.
-> sensitivity to initial conditions and
historical trajectories
Counterfactual history argues that the
present is nothing but the path-dependent
culmination of past events and processes.
To abolish inevitability is to open up
counterfactuals for analysis.
To accept contingency is to accept the
deeply political nature of social reality,
and politics is the “art of the possible.”
Example: Every nationalist movement is
fueled by dreams of an alternative
political geography.
Explanation in realism centers on
necessary and contingent relations
(Sayer 1992).
Necessary relations, identified through
theory, concern the mechanisms that
produce change;
contingent relations are specified in
concrete empirical contexts.
Causal properties are detached from
empirical regularities.
Sayer (1992) notes “The operation of the
same mechanism can produce quite
different results and, alternatively,
different mechanisms may produce the
same empirical result.”
Only if causal laws are equated with
empirical regularities does necessity
triumph over contingency.
Thus, to understand how social worlds are
constructed is to identify, theoretically, the
causal properties involved, their contingent
manifestations in particular places and
times, and the plausible alternatives that
never materialized empirically but are
nonetheless “real.”
What do we mean by the “real”?
If reality consists only of the observed,
we deprive ourselves of understanding
that which is not observable, yet still very
real, i.e., causal properties.
If, however, the “real” is not simply
equated with the observed, we broaden
the definition of “reality” to include not
only what is, but what might have been,
then the lines between the real and the
might-have-been become blurred in
productive and imaginative ways.
Realism elevates unmaterialized
possibilities to the level of ontology,
i.e., what is taken to be “real” forms
one island surrounded by a sea of
possibilities.
Thus reality includes worlds that never
happened in fact, but could have happened.
By focusing on the plausible, we resolve
the dilemma of choosing from an infinite
number of possible worlds.
What is plausible, exactly?
Plausible alternatives to the empirical are
politically defined.
Foucault: the essence of truth is not facts
but power
-> Social reality is theoretically defined:
Word making is also world making.
Every view of reality foregrounds one
possible world and “backgrounds” others.
Discourses don’t simply mirror the world,
they also constitute it.
(not a retreat into idealism)
Contingency is inherent not just in the
social construction of the world, but in
its interpretation as well.
To understand an event is to know the
probability that it took place, as well as
the probability that it might not have
taken place.
Social science is concerned with not only
why things happen, but also why they do
not.
Examples: Ontologies that are more
than the empirical:
religious belief in god
attorneys arguing alternative
explanations of a defendant’s behavior.
structural models of social relations
Contingency implies that the present is
precipitated out of a probability distribution
of possible worlds.
Possible worlds or many-worlds
approaches have a rich history.
Leibniz, who also envisioned relative
space, argued that of all the possible
worlds that might exist, God chose to
create only the one we inhabit.
David Lewis (1986) argues that our world is
only in that we happen to inhabit it: “There
are so many other worlds, in fact, that
absolutely every way that a world could
possibly be is a way that some world is.”
Path dependency:
Evolutionary economics & stochastic
processes challenge assumption of
equilibrium.
e.g. the QWERTY keyboard
“Critical juncture" framework:
antecedent conditions frame agency
during critical junctures in which actors
make contingent choices that set a specific
trajectory of institutional development and
consolidation that is difficult to reverse.
The turn toward contingency has been
accompanied by a retheorization of time
and space as socially produced and
relational.
Cartesian and Newtonian views of absolute
space as a surface have given way to an
emphasis on the relative space of networks.
“Absolute space is fixed and we record or plan events
within its frame. This is the space of Newton and
Descartes and it is usually represented as a pre-existing
and immoveable grid amenable to standardized
measurement and open to calculation. Geometrically it is
the space of Euclid and therefore the space of all manner
of cadastral mapping and engineering practices. The
relative notion of space is mainly associated with the name
of Einstein and the non-Euclidean geometries that began
to be constructed most systematically in the 19th century.
The relational concept of space is most often associated
with the name of Leibniz, who objected vociferously to the
absolute view of space and time so central to Newton’s
theories. By extension, the relational view of space holds
there is no such thing as space or time outside of the
processes that define them. Processes do not occur in
space but define their own spatial frame.” (Harvey 2006, p.
121-123, italics in original).
Massey’s power-geometries argues:
Space is the product of interrelations,
i.e., identities and networks are
co-constituted.
Space is the sphere of multiplicity and
difference.
Space is always under construction,
not made but perpetually becoming.
The openness of space, its political
transformation, is the product of
contending geographical imaginations.
Poststructural approaches reject simplistic
dichotomies:
individual/society, culture/economy,
nature/society, objective/subjective,
global/local, time/space.
In place of dualities and absolute space,
contemporary theory emphasizes
networks and relative space.
Castells’ space of flows
Deleuze and Guattari’s geophilosophy of
the rhizome
Actor-network theory (Latour)
mobilization of rules, resources, and
power, to accomplish tasks, creating
networks of intended and unintended
consequences.
Commodity chains are contingent,
fluctuating networks that jump spatial
scales.
These approaches share an appreciation for
the complexity and heterogeneity of social
life, the critically important roles of culture
and ideology, an emphasis on the actions of
embodied human beings, the centrality of
power and politics, and the profound
contingency of historical & spatial
construction.
In addition to other dichotomies, let us
reject the bifurcation between the “real”
and the “imagined,” the actual and the
possible, the ontological and the
epistemological.
Soja’s Thirdspace (1996) advocates
“journeys to real-and-imagined places.”
Jorge Luis Borges (1970) calls the te
world the “garden of forking paths.”
III. Conclusions
Alternative histories, possible worlds,
and path dependency teach us that to
understand what reality is, we must also
understand what it is not.
“Reality” is anything but inevitable,
but is a palimpsest of unintended
consequences.
If we take “reality” to be simply that
which we can observe empirically, then
the world could have been no other way.
To appreciate the real as more than the
observed – to blur the artificial line
between the empirical and the possible – is
to recognize its deeply contingent nature.
What does this view offer that is new?
1. Understanding of systems that appear
quasi-random (e.g., regional economies)
2. Specification of how initial conditions
lead to convergence (self-organization) or
divergence (chaos)
3. Holistic focus on inter-relations among
system components (anti-reductionist)
4. Overcome dualities (e.g., global v. local,
physical v. human worlds)
5. Emphasis on irreversible historical time
v. abstract linear time
-paths taken v. paths foreclosed