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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