Spatial formations (Theory,Culture and Society)

Theory, Culture & Society Theory, Culture & Society caters for the resurgence of interest in culture within contemporary social science and the humanities. Building on the heritage of classical social theory, the book series examines ways in which this tradition has been reshaped by a new generation of theorists. It will also publish theoretically informed analyses of everyday life, popular culture, and new intellectual movements.

SPATIAL FORMATIONS

EDITOR: Mike Featherstone, University of Teesside SERIES EDITORIAL BOARD

Roy Boyne, University of Teesside Mike Hepworth, University of Aberdeen Scott Lash, Lancaster University Roland Robertson, University of Pittsburgh Bryan S. Turner, Deakin University

Nigel Thrift

Recent volwnes include: The Cinematic Society The Voyeur's Gaze Norman K Denzin Decentring Leisure Rethinking Leisure Theory Chris Rojek Global Modernities Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson The Masque of Femininity The Presentation of Woman in Everyday Life Efrat Tseelon The Arena of Racism Michel Wieviorka Undoing Culture Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity Mike Featherstone The Time of the Tribes The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society Michel Maffesoli Risk, Environment and Modernity Towards a New Ecology edited by Scott Lash, Bronislaw Szerszynski and Brian Wynne For Weber Essays on the Sociology of Fate Bryan S. Turner CyberspaceJCyberbodieslCyberpunk Cultures of Technological Embodiment edited by Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows

@ SAGE Publications London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi

Everything in the universe is encounters, happy or unhappy encounters Gilles Deleuze

Contents

The essence of being radical is physical Michel Foucault

Subjects cannot exist outside a world, nor in any conceivable world. The meaning of the term 'objective' is here: the possibility supplied to subjects as beings for-themselves by what there is to exist in a world and to organise, each time in another way, what there is. Cornelius Castoriadis

Perceiving is ... not an appearance in the theatre of (the individual's) consciousness. It is a keeping-in-touch with the world, an experience of things, rather than a having of experiences. It involves awareness-of instead of just awareness. It may be an awareness of something in the enviromnent or something in the observer or both at once, but there is no content of awareness independent of that of which one is aware. James Gibson

Social events and not social systems should be our concern in any examination of the human world. Such events are always situated in and brought forth by human actions within a human domain or space; they are never stable because they constantly generate responsive actions that differ from the events that elicited them. This background of human practices (linguistic and nonlinguistic) is what corresponds in the human sciences to the structural coupling in the natural world. Francisco Varela

The difficulty - I might say - is not that of finding a solution but rather of recognising as the solution something that looks as if it were only a preliminary to it. ... This is connected, I believe, with wrongly expecting an explanation, whereas the solution of the difficulty is description, if we give it the right place in our considerations. Ludwig Wittgenstein

One of the most harmful habits in contemporary thought is the analysis of the present as being, precisely, in history, a present of rupture, or of high point, or of completion or a returning dawn. The solemnity with which everyone engaged in philosophical discourse reflects on his own time strikes me as a flaw. I think we should have the modesty to say to ourselves that, on the one hand, the time we live in is not the unique or fundamental or irruptive point in history where everything is completed and begun again. We must have the modesty to say, on the other hand, that - even without this solemnity - the time we live in is very interesting. Michel Foucault

List of Tables and Figures Preface Acknowledgements

viii x

xv

'Strange Country': Meaning, Use and Style in Non-Representational Theories Earlier . ..

51

Introduction

53

2 On the Determination of Social Action in Space and Time

63

3 Flies and Germs: A Geography of Knowledge

96

4 Little Games and Big Stories: Accounting for the Practices of Personality and Politics in the 1945 General Election

125

Later . ..

159

Introduction

161

5

Vivos Voco: Ringing the Changes in the Historical Geography of Time Consciousness

169

6 A Phantom State? International Money, Electronic Networks and Global Cities

213

7 Inhuman Geographies: Landscapes of Speed, Light and Power

256

Selected Writings by Nigel Thrift and Others

311

Bibliography

318

Index

355

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

List of Tables and Figures Tables 4.1 Some characteristics of theories and accounts

133

4.2 The General Elections of 1935 and 1945

135

4.3 Proportion of unaccompanied schoolchildren and mothers and children evacuated from some of the major urban areas of England at the outbreak of war 4.4 Employment in Great Britain, 1938 and 1944

142 143-4

4.5 Population increases in selected towns whose population increased by 4 per cent or more, 1938-42

145

4.6 Housing out of civilian use in the United Kingdom, 1944

145

4.7 The distribution of population of Great Britain by region, 1938 and 1942

146

4.8 Consumer purchases of newspapers, magazines and books in the United Kingdom, 1938-44

153

4.9 Fulham Election results, 1935 and 1945

155

5.1 Reconstruction of the monastic day at the beginning of the period

195

5.2 Rates of pay at two of the King's works in the thirteenth century

205

Figures 1.1 The expansion of SUbjective experience: increasing travel over four generations of the same family

42

2.1 Mediating concepts in the schemas of various members of the structurationist school

69

2.2 The life path seen as a compositional ordering and a contextual field

82

2.3 Elements of conflict in context

91

ix

3.1 Knowledge and communication

98

3.2 The five kinds of unknowing

99

3.3 The spatial distribution of chapmen licensed in England and Wales, 1697-8

110

3.4 The diffusion of the quarto edition of the EncyclopMie in France, 1777-82

112

3.5 The diffusion of the quarto edition of the Ency/opMie outside France, 1777-82

113

3.6 The life paths and the daily paths of James Clegg (1679-1756) and Richard Kay (1716-51) during one week in July 1745

115

3.7 The major components of the process of structuring

121

4.1 The geography of the 1935 General Election

137

4.2 The geography of the 1945 General Election

138

4.3 Total numbers billeted in reception areas under the official scheme, 1940-5

141

4.4 Strength of the Home Guard, 1940-5

147

4.5 Strength of the Royal Observer Corps, 1940-5

148

4.6 Numbers in the Civil Defence Services of Great Britain, 1940-5

148

5.1 Date of first report of mechanical clock

193

5.2 Distribution of monasteries and other religious houses: (a) Benedictine and Cluniac houses founded before 1150; (b) regular canons, c. 1300; (c) the new orders; (d) religious houses for women, c. 1300; (e) priories, c. 1300

197-201

5.3 Distribution of medieval boroughs

203

6.1 The City of London

233

6.2 Business areas within the City of London, 1938/9

234

6.3 Employment in the City of London, 1801-1991

235

6.4 Location of City of London overseas banks, 1993

251

7.1 The UK National Electricity Supply Grid, 1994

307

PREFACE

xi

and relatedly, it has guided me towards a modest view of the of 'theory'. Theory is situated and recast as a set of YlllnTlltl,re sketches, as 'fictions' in Foucault's sense of the tenn, arising out deficiency in our having-to·do wiili the world concertfully' (Heidegger, p. 88). And the knowledge produced and regulated by that 'ilieory' is and Bourdieu {1990ai'Bourdieuand ·Wacquant, 1992),· I • betle'lre tbattoo many of these>exercisesin.'reflexivity' are simply a means o{=refreating frO:1l1the one special responsibility that Ido think academics . have~which is to multiply the '. commnnicativeresourcesiliat· people have available to them. In other words, iliesereflexive exercises too often end up simply patronising readers, both through making ilie absurd assumption that readers naively believeiliattexts are in some way related toa referent out there and through making ilie assumption iliat a text about ilie way a text is produced is somehow more reflexive than a text wiili an actual object. Instead, I am in favour of what Latour (1988) calls 'infra· reflexivity'i which includes in its credo: ilie defiationof meiliodology and its replacement by style; self.exemplification railier tl1an self-reference; being

xiii

PREFACE

PREFACE

on the side of the known rather than on the side of knowing; not being ashamed of weak explanations; working for equal relations between the represented and the representational; and automatically assuming transdisciplinarity. Whether this means that my stories are 'theories', I am not sure (M. Hannah, 1992). Second, these six chapters constantly cross the boundaries between categories like the economic, the social and the cultural. I want to see these categories, which are in any case increasingly redundant, fail. Why? Because, too often, they signal a kind of self-censorship on the part of authors about what it is appropriate for them to study (M. Morris, 1992b), or, even worse, a kind of intellectual snobbery. Third, I use large amounts of historically and geographically specific material. I do this because, on the whole, I am wary of purely theoretical excursions. Their lack of contextual detail (which usually means that they have a very specific but uncharted context) often makes these exercises obscure, even as claims to the contrary are being registered (Bordo and Moussa, 1993). Fourth, and finally, I have striven for a particular, tentative written style. which at one time might have been called 'meat and potatoes' but nowadays is probably best described as 'simple side salad'. One of the most important insights of poststructuralism is that 'what we can communicate ... can be overcom~ by a change of style' (Wood, 1990, p. 116), but, in practice, this has often meantiliatwriting has become elliptical rather than multidirectional and therefore.reliant on petrified exegetical and interpretational habits (including many of the manifestations of deconstruction); In particular, I have triedt0writeinaway which mirrors my concern with undermining the 'represettt;rtion'50fl.ntention or meaning which· can. so easily turn into the cOrllpu1:~i()n:'t(};seemeanings, and particularly· hidden ones, everywhere'(Pfeiffe~,1~~4;~ 7)...... It has to be said thatthisbp~ h:$beenalongtime coming.lnpart, this tardiness is the result O:fUl~atQ2e:1lJ.en~ion:edsuspicions. about the powers of what is conventionally regar:4¢~,as.theory.. In part, itisbecause I have tried to forge a particular fOFm1)ftheory; one that is always situated, and, in consequence, I have tried to move' away from the kind of abstract theory which washes away contentby;ign:oring context,. ·leaving .ouly empty panoptic visions. In part, it is because,except for a brief period when structuration theory was 'in', I havepur:sued these thoughts outside the theoretical and empirical mainstream of geography, a subject within which I have been glad to live my life but which seems to me to have a disturbing tendency to sort itself into cosy intellectual-interactional coteries too quickly and too finally. Then last, it is also because, in .part, I have some doubts about the ethics of sitting comfortably theorising in a study when the world is clearly in such a dreadful state: I have always wanted to produce 'theoretical' excursions in parallel with more 'applied' work which can have some immediate impacts, however humble these might be. What is certain is that this book could not have been produced at all

being able to translate the affirmative energies of many people. It is to know where to start - or stop - in making due acknowledgethem. book is, first of all, the product of convivial contexts. I want to single three of these. At the Australian National University, I want to thank Forbes, Mike Taylor and Peter Williams. At Saint David's University ~Ol1eg:e, Lampeter, I want to acknowledge the sturdy companionship of Cloke and David Kay. At the University of Bristol I have received the .Sllpport of many, many people but especially Malcolm Anderson, Keith (.uasseu; Allan Frey, Paul Glennie, Peter Haggett, Les Hepple, Tony Hoare, Routledge, John Thomes and Sarah Whatmore . Second, I want to single out some of my co-authors over the years. I often with others (as the list of Selected Writings makes clear). I would only that this has been a matter of principle as well as a source of pleasure it seems to me that if, as I believe, authorship, like subjectivity, exists 'Ilketvveenpeople, then we can either acknowledge this overtly or covertly, and prefer the former option. Those who have shared a third space over the have included Ash Amin, Jonathan Beaverstock, Tommy Carlstein, Cloke, Stuart Corbridge,.Peter Daniels, Michael Dear, Peter Dicken, Glennie, Peter Jackson, Ron Johnston, Andrew Leyshon, John J..,Qvenlllp:, Don Parkes, Richard Peet, Steve Pile, Allan Pred, Mike Taylor Williams. I want to thank the postgraduate students who I have been in supervising or CQ,supervising over the years. They have .nrodluet,d inspiration (and references) when I most needed them: Jonathan NlckBingham, James Boardwe1l, Catherine Brace, Paul Rebecca Chiu; Ian Clarke, Ian Cook, Mike Crang, Neil {flUU-"""Ull
1n1lest,edshnplytQkeepl1etworkst()gether -as any withitsyastlists()rre~a.iJ,'ersishows ... Actorrk tl1j~()ry:.3'ls(J,·re:Coigt1is:es· the;'ln:y1ofiatlceofmistakes,and as creative negative 1ll0m~n.ts,t·Follrth,itproblematisessubject...object )nS belcause ofits·catho.1.icview of what can eountasactors.. Then. UldcfilruU[y,.itdelnOltlSfll'at(~slllO~'!l"eality is ·.co~tructed .through pro'~ of tr31l1s1:ation, as:soc:iation andalli~Ce.\vhich.strengthen particular on~rla(:C(Jun1ts.dfpractices. atitheexpense .ofothers;.. lnotherwords reality . and '. truth;like·buildirigafreewayor.asuper-computer, recQgnisedas:intricafely;otgamsed. soci(;Fpoliticalprooosses' (Ward, I!;I~''k,n. 89}.Let me now expand on these points; ~eory . uses the. 'topological presupposition' (Mol and the. network toeonsider how social agency is constructed. T~leji}loodlme of actor-network theoryispoststructuralism (and especially by symbolic interactionism out of network philosophies of sdeilce. As Law (1994, p.lS) has it: {a·Ltlti~¥e~()w

The provenance of actor-network theory lies in poststructuralism: the vision is of many semiotic systems, many orderings, jostling together to genera~ the soc~al. On .the other hand actor~network theory is moreconcemed Wlth changmg recursive processes than is usual in writing influenced by structuralism. It tends to

24

SPATIAL FORMATIONS

tell stories, stories that have to do with the processes of ordering that generate effects such as technologies, stories about how actor-networks elaborate themselves, and stories which erode the analytical status of the distinction between the macro- and micro-social. Actor-network theory has three main characteristics. First, agents - which can vary in size from individual human subjects to the largest organisations - are treated as relational effects. Second, however, agents are not unified effects. They are contingent achievements. Many of the stories of actornetwork theorists recount 'how it is that agents more or less, and for a period only, manage to constitute themselves. Agency, if it is anything, is a precarious achievement' (Law, 1994, p. 101). Third, the social world is conceived of as fragmentary. It is a set of more or less related bits and pieces which are the result of endless attempts at producing networks some of which are currently relatively successful, some of which are currently the social equivalent of the faded silk flowers in the attic. The 'social' is the outcome of this 'recursive but incomplete performance of an unfiavourable number of intertwined orderings' (Law, 1994, p. 101). Thus in actornetwork theory 'modes of production', 'structures', 'classes', 'interests', and th~ !ike, are not treated as the carriers of events but rather as a set of effects ansmg from a whole complex of network relations: 'translation is a process before it is a result' (Callon, 1986, p. 224). It is often written that actor-network theory is an attempt to combine the insight of economics, that it is things that draw actors in relationships, with the insight of sociology, that actors come to define themselves, and others, through interactions. Thus, 'actors define one another in interaction - in the intermediaries that they put into circulation' (CalIon, 1991, p. 135). These intermediaries - usually considered to be texts, technical artefacts human beings and money - allow networks to come into being by givi~g social links shape and consistency and therefore some degree of longevity and size. But they are not passive tools. .For example, texts and technical artefacts can clearly define the role played by others in the network - both humans and non-humans. In other words, the 'material' and the 'social' intertwine and interact in· all m.anner of promiscuous combinations. A network is, therefore, defined by>the actors and by the circulation of intermediaries in interaction. But that still leaves open the question of how networks are established and stabilised. Murdoch (1995, pp. 747-8) provides the best explanation of this process: In order for ~ actor t? successfully enrol en~ties (human and non~human) within a network theIr behaVIOur must be standardIsed and channelled in the directions desired by the enrolling actor. This will entail redefining the roles of the actors d ~t,ltities as ~ey co~e. into alignment, such that they come to gain new Identities or attnbutes Within the network. It is the intennediaries which act to bind actors together, 'cementing' the links. When there is a perfect translation or redefinition, of actors' identities and behaviours, then these are stabilised within the network. The stronger the network, the more tightly the various entities (human and non-human) are tied in. Despite their heterogeneity they work in unison. Each actor is able to 'speak for all, and to mobilise all the skills and

:m

'STRANGE COUNTRY'

25

alliances within the network' (Callon, 1991, p. 151). The more stable the network, the more irreversible the translations. The links and relationships would be predictable, standardised; the network would be 'heavy with nonns' (CalIon, 1991, p. 151). However the 'power' of the intennediaries may be curtailed by actors modifying or appropriating them in accordance with their own projects. When the translation process has been weakly executed, the enrolling actors find their states continually in question and find it hard to mobilise other parts of the network. Thus successful or strong networks might be considered to be those where the processes of translation have been effectively executed, allowing the enrolling actor to consolidate the network on its own tenns. successful, strong networks will clearly often involve action at a . and this kind of action is in itself an achievement, one that can only be guaranteed by socio-technical innovations which circulate ~!~terme:dUln€:S - from postal systems to long-distance navigation to modern i¢~lml:)U1:erised telecommunications. In other words, in actor-network theory, is an ongoing and transient achievement and the world is one in 'actors have only relative size and are fighting hard to vary the size everyone else' (Latour, 1988, p. 174). Such an account of the struggle to achieve scale leads easily on to the of power (Law, 1991). In actor-network theory, power is conof as the continuous outcome of the strength of the associations 'ijetwl~ actors and 'understanding what sociologists generally call power means describing the way in which actors are defined, lS~<J,ciated and simultaneously obliged to remain faithful to their alliances'. :l&'S"i.lL"'U, 1986, p. 224). As Murdoch (1995, p. 748) again puts it ;.Ul'~ULJ~\N

stronger the network the more powerful the translating actor. Thus, those powerful are not those who 'hold'power but are those able to enrol, if"COl1Wlce anden1ist others into networks on tennswhich allow the initial actors i+".tIlell:legget'}. It is only to suggest that· activity is future-oriented ~pcm()mlatlve. Second, although an energetic ontology is oriented to tllis does not mean that it has to ignore spatial fixity or the boundaries. Space is striated, which is both a negative and a COllOlIlOn of existence. Third, an energetic ontology is committed ultiplil:l1ty but the process of multiplication is not unconstrained or In particular, recognition has to be given to tneimportance of presences 'and absences (as well as linguistic presences and in .producing breaks, lacunae and emissions which interrupt and encountering. of this kind of energetic ontology can be found in a number of t,.·,i..v.·...,,, authors. For example, it is there in Deleuze (although it is, too quickly transferred into pulsing flows). It can be found in (for example, Giddens, 1984) as interaction in contexts of cobn~llce. It can also be found in Bhaskar's (1993) most recent exposition of di~Llec:tic. For Bhaskar (1993, p. 53) 'all changes are spatio-temporal, space-time is a relational property of the meshwork of material beings', and he is sure that this in turn means that as much attention needs to be paid to absence as presence. For example, practices involve observing from situations as much as they involve being. present within them.

32

SPATIAL FORMATIONS

(2) Epistemology. This weak ontology is shadowed by a weak epistemology. It has become increasingly clear that there are very strong limits on what can be known and how we can know it because of the way human subjects are embodied as beings in time-space, because of our positioning in social relations, and because there are numerous perspectives on, and metaphors of, what even counts as knowledge or, more precisely, knowledges. This does not mean that it is necessary to opt for an unabashed nihilism or relativism, but it does mean that we cannot do much better than Haraway in arguing for politics and epistemologies of location, positioning and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims. These are claims on people's lives; the view from a body, always a complex, contradictory, structuring and structured body, versus the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity. (Haraway, 1991a, p. 195)

Haraway's idea of 'situated knowledges' argues for the existence of an archipelago of radically contingent knowledges (Serres, 1982) but she still believes that a kind of objectivity can be attained through acknowledging embodiment and by framing 'the object of knowledge as an actor and agent, not a screen or a ground or a resource, never finally as slave to the master that closes off thedia1ecti{I:>cel!ses to us their intrinsic dynamic. And by studying the different different people,and different times in different contexts, resolve tb:POi;e the phenomenology of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty and it. This is a story which is based on seeing the agent as his form ofiife, history (or culture) or bodily existence, of shaping employed here is one that implies a quite of relation to the world from the ordinary casual link that confused with~ Shotter's and Taylor's (I993b) use of ~Witt~~en:stei,niam notions like engaged agency and background closest to describing this relation;. their concern is with conditions of intelligib{Jity of certain terms of experience, in which this experience is described are thus given their • .,......Vll to this form of embodiment'(faylor, 1993b, p. 319). sensibility', whatCastoriadis (1987) calls the work of what I am trying to cultivate, but it is not a sensibility confused with the standard philosophical quest for t."H1J'''... relies on. the notion ofa fixed semantic space, chosen the possible. combinations, ·which I can then mean.· Or, to succinctly still: wemake for philosophical expla:natiouscome, seem to come, from we are, as it w~re, looking down onto the relation. between reality, s().ry,e kind of factor re~ possibility•. We think that we our questions about it. Our questions are formed from [Ol·din.arv life,· but the ways we·uSually ask and ·answer questions, our interests, the forms our reasoning and inquiries take, look from ,~pos~uc'n to be 'rags'. Our own .linguistic constructions, cut free from :COllstraints of their ordinary functioning, take us in: the characteristic form of precisely of philosophy as an area of inquiry, in the sense in which with it. (Diamond, 1991, pp. 69-70) lU.Wlll\';fi.

rx.rltZt:s. This ontological-epistemological stance also implies a certain

of ethics. It should be clear by now that I have an antipathy for

36

SPATIAL FORMATIONS

grand theories which abstract and decontextualise by extracting and then reapplying a set of principles from one set of practices to another (Butler, 1994), and this antipathy extends to theories of comprehensive social ideals. It seems to me that ideal theories - theories of the principles that perfectly just

societies would implement - often distract attention from pressing social problems and that, when these problems are addressed through ideal theories, the Ideas they commend are too stringent to be helpful for purposes of devising feasible solutions in a profoundly nonideal world. Abstracting from the realities of pervasive and persistent injustice and historical animosity between social groups, ideal theory overlooks the problems of entrenched domination and oppression, offers (at best) vague guidelines for eliminating these evils, and even obstructs social change by locking in place ostensibly neutral standards that in fact disadvantage some social groups. (Meyers, 1994, p. I) It is no surprise, then, that the account that I would want to offer of moral reflection emphasises the body, affect and expressiveness, emotion and rhetoric. Most particularly, I look toward three sets of writings. First, there are the psychoanalytic feminists like Jessica Benjamin who object to moral philosophy's conception of people as monastic subjects who are essentially rational and homogeneous bearers of duties and seekers after rights and who stress 'the role of culturally transmitted imagery in shaping people's moral perception, the contribution of empathy to moral reflection, and the potential of a complex moral identity to enhance moral insight' (Meyers, 1994, p. 3). For these writers, moral reflection demands mutual recognition, to use Benjamin's (1988) phrase, an empathy with others which, in turn, requires: counter-figurational strategies· which symbolise the practices of disadvantaged groups in productive ways; notions of the responsible act as heterogeneous; and concepts of moral identity as able to take into account capacities and limitations. Thus,

instead of seeing moral refiectfonas the application of an overriding philosophic~y approved criterion. of right and wrong to a set of available options, the latter VIew sees moral judgement .as a process of interpreting the moral signficance ofvarious cases of conduct that one might undertake both in light of one's own values and capabilities and also in light of one's understanding of others' needs and circumstances. (Meyers;. 1994, p. 17) Second, there are 'materialist feminists' like Noddings (1984) and Ruddick (1996) who, drawing 011 the work of Gilligan (1982) amongst others, lay emphasis on an'ethics;.iULiofgr.()wingbett~ eyes and ears, growsspecla:cles, microscopes, and hearing aids. ;And instead of growing swifter legs, he grows swifter motor cars. (,lnSIIea