the sign and its denotations: deconstructing

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The crisis of the movements: the enabling state as quisling. Antipode 23: 214-228. Thrift, N. l983. On the determination of social action in space and time.
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THE SIGN AND ITS DENOTATIONS: DECONSTRUCTING THE IDEA OF GEOGRAPHY

Anssi Paasi Department of Geography University of Oulu

Nordia Geographical Yearbook 1995, vol. 24, pp. 9-38.

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Abstract

The article discusses the nature of geography in a cultural and social situation which is increasingly being named 'postmodern'. The changing contexts of social action, the challenges of (applied) scientific work and the altering claims for knowledge are discussed as a background against which the analysis of the nature of geography will be contextualized. Geography, like any other discipline, consists of a multilayered scientific field which comprises local (departments), national (institutions) and international spheres and which is composed of power relations which continually control the intellectual content of the discipline and the actions of its researchers. Nevertheless the present paper does not reduce the idea of geography merely to the academic discipline but comprehends it in a broader sense. Thus the aim is to analyse why social and cultural researchers in general became interested in the geographical basis of social action during the 1980s. The purpose of the paper is thus to deconstruct the idea of geography, that is to analyse the word as a linguistic sign and discuss the denotations connected with it contextually. A further aim of deconstructing the idea of geography is to analyse the limits of legitimate science and authority as regards the nature and challenges of the academic discipline of geography. On this basis an analytical distinction between three geographies is presented. Geography 1 refers to the geographicality/spatiality of reality, that is to the distribution and socio-spatial arrangements of natural, cultural and social phenomena. Geography 2 refers to the academic institution of geography, which is a manifestation of various power relations which constitute the limits to legitimate ways of approaching the reality expressed in Geography 1. Geography 3 refers to geography as intellectual action,

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and categories which are produced and reproduced through this action. This action constitutes and reproduces the language and categories through which geographers, wherever they are, can potentially communicate with each other. Finally, an illustration of the use of these geographies among geographers will be presented

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INTRODUCTION The 1980s witnessed a rapidly increasing interest within the social sciences in the geographical or spatial (and historical) constitution of social reality and its local manifestations (see Giddens l984, Foucault l980, l986, Smith l988, Said l990). A new spatial language emerged, above all on the basis of modern social theory. Geography, space, region, place, locality, etc. became the keywords of this interdisciplinary discourse, which is at least ostensibly characterized by a convergence. One part of this trend was the aim of geographers to register human geography in the field of social sciences on the basis of a frame which can be labelled a political-economy perspective1 and which refers to a general critical theory emphasizing the social production of existence (Peet & Thrift l989b). In practice, parties with varying backgrounds arose in the debate over the role of spatial phenomena, and these were only partly fused with the discipline of geography (see Cooke l989a).

The present article first interprets briefly the cultural and symbolic forms and underlying factors involved in this debate over 'geography' or what is spatial2. This will be done by contextualizing the debate within the broader frameworks of social and cultural change and by scrutinizing the power relations involved in scientific action and in the operation of this scientific field. The second task is a more specific one: to analyse the relations of this debate over what is 'geographical' to the discipline of geography, one specific manifestation of the idea of geograph/y/ical/ity. The aim is thus to scrutinize the changing idea of geography and the forms that it takes.

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THE REDISCOVERY OF WHAT IS GEOGRAPH/Y/ICAL

There are numerous areas in which the idea of space became important during the 1980s. To generalize the works of human geographers and urban sociologists, new interest in space or geography emerged in at least four forms, which were partly linked with each other - at least through criticism - and which aimed at creating abstractions of the spatial constitution of the 'social' on various scales. Firstly, the idea of space came into focus in discourses relating to the role of time and space in the constitution of social practice in specific contexts, or locales, which are not confined to any specific regional scale. The main exponent in these debates has been the sociologist Giddens (l984), who took an interest in the roles of space on the threshold of the l980s and gained his inspiration to a great extent from time-geography. The (ontological) discourse provided by Giddens was rather abstract and was not aimed explicitly at expressing recent concrete socio-spatial developments taking place in advanced societies. Neither has it been linked with other theoretical debates on the role of the spatial (the production of space, the problem of scale, etc.). Some geographers have nevertheless partly rested on his conceptualizations when constructing their frames for an analysis of regions and regional transformation in terms of social theory (see Gregory l982, Pred l984, Paasi l986).

Secondly, the role of space was at the focus in discussions aimed at evaluate explicitly the postmodern cultural logic/s which emphasize(s) the fragmentation of our experience of time and history and the manifestation of reality in the form of images (Jameson l984). These developments were said to strenghten the role of ‘space over time’. Foucault (l986), for instance, was ready to name the current epoch festively as "the epoch of space". Some geographers have been inspired by debates on postmodernism, most profoundly Soja (l989a), who discusses broadly the reassertion

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of space in critical social theory and Harvey (l989), who aims at constructing a broad framework to contextualize the role of 'postmodern' trends in the totality of the capitalist society (in the 1990s there has a boom as far as these topics are concerned!).

The third focus of discourse emerged around the restructuration of economics, politics and culture taking place in the developed capitalist societies. This was the so-called locality debate, which geographers, sociologists, etc. pursued in order to theorize on the role of space in the constitution of general social processes in specific concrete local contexts, or localities, drawing their theoretical inspiration from realist philosophy, for example (see Urry l981, Cooke l989b, Duncan & Savage l991). The idea of postmodernism was also linked to the locality debate but this was severely challenged (see Lovering l989). Locality was perhaps the most widely debated category in regional research during the second half of the 80s, and some important epistemological and methodological problems (the role of abstractions, the relations between abstract and concrete research etc.) were crucial themes in the debate (Cox & Mair l989, Graham & Martin l989). The locality debate has by no means been a purely academic one: there have been historically and geographically specific reasons for studying localities, and these reasons are both theoretically and socio-politically constituted (see Massey l991a).

Fourthly, and partly associated with the locality debate, Giddens' ideas of space (and time) as a constituent of social action and Wallerstein's (l988) World System perspectives, a miscellaneous debate sprung up over a reconstructed form of regional geography, which should interpret both theoretically and historically the constitution of regions in the regional transformation taking place on various scales (see Thrift l983, l989, Pred l984, Paasi l986, l991, Sayer l989b, Taylor l988, 1991b). Whereas the first

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and second discourse types advocated quite abstract theoretization, the third and fourth fields of debate sprung up from a more concrete basis.

Much used phrases, such as 'geography matters' (Massey l984), or 'space makes a difference' (Sayer l985) presumably became the most significant passwords into the realm of this new discourse. All four discourses scrutinized the role of the spatial, of space or geography, in the constitution of social reality. Although the links of geographers with the social sciences became more prevalent since the 1970s (see Urry l989), these discourses on the role of space or 'geography' were final break through for geographers into the field of social theory. It was noted that the spatial is a social construct, but social relations are also constructed over space: which makes a difference (see Massey l985, 12). The rapproachement of geography with social theory was documented impressively in Gregory and Urry (l985) and Peet and Thrift (l989a).

CONTEXTUALIZING THE DEBATE

It can be argued that the social and cultural developments outlined in the debates on the modern/postmodern condition provided a general background for comprehending the increased attractiveness of the idea of space or 'geography', even though some reservations should be made here. No consensus existed as to the contents and scope of these developments and their relations, or as to the relations between modernity and postmodernity3, but it is useful anyhow to analyse the debate, since in any case much of the effort to inscribe geography into the social theory emerged on this basis.

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Broadly, the modern/postmodern categories refer (1) to changes taking place in the material basis of the society, e.g. in the principles of organizing production and consumption, (2) to changes in the demands raised as regards the role of knowledge in society (Lyotard l985), and (3) to changes taking place in the production and reproduction of culture and cultural signification (see Bauman l988, Lash l990)4. What is important in this connection, however, is the fact that these categories refer to two sets of phenomena: (1) to changes taking place in societies, e.g. as a consequence of the internationalization of the economy, the growth of the independence of great monopolies, the shift to flexible forms of work organization, the increasing role of the service class, the increase in cultural fragmentation and pluralism, etc., and (2) to changes taking place in social theory i.e. in theories interpreting the processes and mechanisms constitutive of social reality (Lash & Urry l987, 17; Lash l990, 238).

As for the 'material' basis of the developed capitalist societies, these tendencies have been distinct, even if we can disagree over the details (see e.g. Callinicos l989). During the process of social change, it is argued, the Fordist basis of production will gradually be replaced by a principle of flexibility which will penetrate the field of production as a general maxim - as a principle through which the new capitalism will re-organize the space-economy. A new regime of accumulation with its modes of regulation will emerge. Flexible machines, flexible systems of production, flexible specialization and integration, flexible accumulation, etc. have been expressions of a new language characterizing the change which has been taking place (Gertler l988). The changes in labour processes, labour markets, products and comsumption patterns, on the other hand, have been regarded as expressions of flexibility.

The problem with this 'language' has been, of course, whether some obvious qualitative changes taking place in society and culture justify talking of a new historical

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period (cf. Callinicos l989, 152). Sayer (l989a), for example, posits that the new forms of production are not so separate from the earlier stages as our dualistic way of thinking, and even the rhetoric we so often fall into, make us believe. Whatever the case is as to the theoretical premises and their interpretation, these general developments have had a powerful effect on the change in the geography of the developed capitalist societies through the restructuration of economics, politics and, more broadly, culture, and much of recent research into (critical) human geography and urban and regional studies has analysed these processes in conceptual terms and in concrete analysis. Thus this discourse, whether empirically valid or not, has been one background for the discovery of geography, and it is in this context that 'geography matters' or 'space makes a difference' - for this has created new theoretical/practical challenges for analysing these processes.

Another idea put forward by the 'postmodernists' and also manifested in the debates of geographers, is that traditional scientific fields will drift into a crisis during the developments illustrated above. Simultaneously with changes in the nature of knowledge and the demands made on scientific knowledge, traditional academic disciplines will also lose their foundation. Lyotard (l985, 13) suggests that in a postmodern society penetrated by new cultural logics, knowledge will lose its use value, and be no longer a goal in itself. Knowledge will be increasingly produced to create new value in new production. This is paradoxical from the standpoint of the scientific disciplines, since in the course of the rise of modern society and science at the end of the 19th century, a strong wave of specialization caused the field of these disciplines to diversify, whereas now the traditional boundaries between them have been vanishing. New multidisciplinary themes and problems have been emerging - e.g. the role of space and localities in regional research - to become the main objects of research (or 'hot areas', cf. Becher l989, 69). Similarly it has been claimed that a new pluralism is arising, as

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one-sided methodological approaches (marxism, positivism, humanism, etc.), the old grand narratives, are increasingly being replaced by more specific and sensitive approaches, like new cultural or ethnographic perspectives (see Livingstone l990, Taylor l991a)5. There exist more critical voices, too, of course. Relph (l991, 104), for instance, maintains that pluralism can be positive but it is by no means unproblematic, since it can simultaneously open the door to relativism.

The rise of the idea of the spatial to a position at the core of discourse regarding social theory has doutbless been significant for the professional identity of geographers, since the status of geography, its symbolic capital or prestige within the field of the social sciences, has by tradition been relatively modest, the ultimate reason for this being the fact that the naturalist heritage of geography has been associated with naive empiricism6. Another obvious factor contributing to the obscurity of its prestige has been the diversified nature of geography in the field of disciplines. Geographers have by tradition had overlaps with neighbouring groups of subjects and a very heterogeneous set of professional concerns, and for this reason they readily absorb ideas and techniques from other intellectual territories and identify themselves with other professions (cf. Becher l989, 37, 154-57).

Problems in the debate

In this new convergence arising over the role of space, geographers have been eager to adopt the ideas of space or geography put forward by the representatives of other disciplines (e.g. Foucault l980, l986, Jameson l984) and in this way to 'write' the discipline of geography into this new field of spatial discourse. Concepts are totems through which the authors identify themselves with specific academic tribes (Becher 1989) and these concepts are also employed in the creation of distinctions with

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respect to the unsatisfactory past of a discipline. We have to be careful, however, with the conclusions that can be drawn from these debates and terminological loans. As Smith (l990a, 166-169, cf. Smith l990b) has pointed out, the materiality of space (socially as well as physically constituted) which has usually been a central assumption for most geographers (nevertheless not all of them), differs from the largely metaphorical ideas of space held by those trained in social and literary theory, for example, for whom the materiality of space is often unproblematic7.

To note the significance of space in the constitution of social world - as is currently increasingly taking place in social theory - is not the same thing as noting the role of geography as a discipline, even though many of the prominent figures in the debate, e.g. David Harvey, are geographers. The role and potential contributions of academic geography have very seldom been evaluated by social theoreticians - and in this framework geography is quite an insignificant enterprise. One exception is Giddens (l984, 355-368), who was interested in the role of space and time, and also in geography as an academic discipline, and similarly Urry (l989), with his discussion of the exchange of ideas between geographers and sociologists, is indicative of this interest. Personal contacts with geographers were an obvious background factor in both cases.

What this newly discovered geography in fact means has remained somewhat uncertain. Some geographers appear to have actively forgotten that they are 'geographers' - where geography is comprehended as a traditional empiricist field and instead have aimed at being social theoreticians. Simultaneously, some social theoreticians have been actively problematizing the role of geography, or what is spatial. The contents implied by the idea of geography seems to be changing in this discourse. The idea of geography describing and interpreting the earth's surface or

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analysing abstract spatial relations has been increasingly replaced by the idea of what is geographical or spatial as constitutive of various social and cultural practices and representations. Geographers have discovered, writes Massey (l985, 12), that the root causes of what they want to explain lay outside the discipline. Sociologists, for their part, have found that space is the distinctively significant dimension of contemporary capitalism - in terms of both the most salient processes and social consciousness (Urry l985, 21). Space, region etc. are thus no longer merely classificatory categories emerging from the sphere of the discipline of geography: they are constitutive of social and cultural processes and at the same time socio-cultural constructs (Paasi l991). The important point is that the study of the spatial in this context is no longer the monopoly of geographers - or as Harvey (l984, 7) puts it, geography is 'too important to be left to geographers'.

In the following sections the idea of geography and contexts will be analysed in more detail. Geography is not understood merely as an academic discipline, nor will it be comprehended on the basis of the research objects or approaches of those calling themselves geographers. Instead the idea of geography is discussed from various points of view and academic geography is contextualized within this frame and field of power relations. The first part of this task is to look over the narratives employed by tradition in its legitimation within the academic sphere.

CREATING CONTINUITY AND LEGITIMATING THE PAST: THE QUESTION OF THE HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHY

The challenges of the postmodernism debate have been both promising and confusing for academic geography. The greatest promise has been associated with the field of social and cultural theory and geography's contribution to this discourse,

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while the confusion has roots which stretch well beyond the debate on postmodernism, to the institutionalization of the discipline. Contrary to many other disciplines, the institutionalization of geography was not a result of scientific specialization, which was promoted as a product of the modern era and emerging capitalism at the end of the 19th century. Academic disciplines are social constructions (Gregory l989b, 350, Johnston l991, 143). Even if we can claim that it was the extension of the scientific methods of observation, classification and comparison that made academic geography possible (see Stoddard l986, 35), the chairs of geography were originally founded at universities, because the bureaucrats - firstly in the state of Prussia simply found geography important as regards the ideology of nationalism and imperialism (Capel l981, Taylor l985a, l986). Following this political decision and specific tasks associated with it (mainly education), geography has always been under the specific protection of the state. As Taylor (l985a, 95) points out, geography has never been strongly represented in the private sector.

One of the first tasks of geographers (who were originally recruited from various disciplines, mainly the natural sciences) was to constitute the limits and identity for their field. Geographers did not turn to analysing the radical changes taking place in society as a consequence of emerging modernization. The most typical idea for legitimating the discipline since its institutionalization has been a regional/spatial point of view, not any specific object of research. Much time and energy among geographers has been taken up in finding an answer to the eternal question, "what is geography?" - the question regarded by some authors as misinformed. Livingstone (l990, 368), for example, puts forward the suggestion that there may well be no essentialist definition of geography at all, no metaphysical core.

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The development of the systematic branches of the discipline, particularly during the last 30-40 years or so, has led to a situation where there exist innumerable geographies, as indicated by Dear (l988). These have emerged from various philosophical and methodological traditions and vary in emphasis as regards the pure and applied elements in research (Taylor l985a). The fragmentation of geography is a typical expression of the changing and deepening relations between science and society, in which researchers are concentrating on more detailed, often applied themes. There may no longer be such professionals as "intellectual geographers" within the discipline who have the possibilities and resources to be interested in its totality (cf. Harvey l990, 431). Actually, however, due to the fact that the origin of academic geography was to a great extent based on external influences, i.e. on the role of state, the need to legitimate geography in the scientific field, as well as the question of unity, was fundamental at the beginning - as it has been ever since. These are inevitably crucial questions in the present (postmodern?) situation where the boundaries between traditional disciplines are becoming more obscure and geography has been found to be a significant idea within several other disciplines, for instance.

But how has the Grand Narrative of academic geography traditionally been constructed? In principle, it is reasonable to make a distinction between two conceptions of history in the case of geography. Firstly, geography can be comprehended as a specific - not necessarily academic - form of spatial knowledge and, secondly it can be understood as specific institutionalised practices of academics, people called 'geographers' in the academic division of labour (cf. Granö l981, Johnston l986). This distinction is essential as regards both the whole idea of geography and the idea of the history of geography.

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The fundamental distinction runs between two basic questions. Firstly, do we comprehend geography (1) as a universal idea of regionality or spatiality, i.e. an idea referring to the location, arrangement and relations of various physical, cultural and social phenomena, or secondly, (2) do we interpret the idea of geography on the basis of the social and historical connotations that the institutionalised discipline of geography has had, beginning from the emergence of the institution as an expression of the nationalistic and colonialistic needs of the state and after that, as an academic field whose connections with other fields, culture and society have varied both historically and spatially at various stages in the academic division of labour.

In practice, these interpretations have often been benevolently intermixed. For instance, geographers constructing narratives of the history of the discipline usually more or less unconsciously aim at legitimating the idea of geography through this mixture, so that the ‘historical reality’ they create exceeds these two historical narratives and turns out to be an expression and legitimation of the unity of the discipline. Taylor (1986) speaks about Whig histories, which emphasize progress and continuity, usually originating from Antiquity, in which the author's preferred current geography is the inevitable culmination of that history. This dialogue between past and present tells us as much about the author and his or her present as about the history of the subject. Thus the ultimate question, "what is geography", still remains.

Taylor (l986, 445-446) interprets the idea of geography by distinguishing generic and historical geographies. His generic classification appears to be a useful introduction for an analysis of the complicated idea of geography, since it refers to purposes to which the geographical knowledge is to be put. On this basis Taylor makes a distinction between geography 1) as necessary knowledge, 2) as professional knowledge, 3) as popular knowledge and 4) as gainful knowledge. The first regards to geography as

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necessary and ubiquitous knowledge, since the production and reproduction of society by its members necessarily involves the use of spatial and environmental knowledge, 'doing geography'. On the other hand, geography as professional knowledge is produced by practitioners who claim the title 'geographer'. As Taylor proposes, geography as a discipline is a specific creation, in the field of which restrictions will be established on entry into the 'profession'. Geography as popular knowledge refers to the traveller's tales - a 'geography' which is often confused with the academic discipline. Geography as gainful knowledge is, according to Taylor, rarely discussed by geographers, as it relates to people doing geography rather than making it. The knowledge produced in this process is potent, often secret - and the keyword is intelligence.

Taylor concludes that there have been countless concrete individual necessary geographies, rather less state and corporate gainful geographies, more numerous popular geographies, and relatively few professional geographies, since the latter presuppose a society which is finally able to develop knowledge and produce its own division of labour as separate specializations. Hence the histories constructed by Whig historians actually do not constitute a single story but instead consist of numerous separate, distinct geographies (Taylor l986, 446). It is important to note, as Livingstone (l990, 368) writes, that geography's texts and contexts are constructed together. Recent debates on the role of the 'spatial' or geography have been an expression of a change of context, and also of a change in the idea of geography itself.

DECONSTRUCTING THE IDEA OF GEOGRAPHY

The above discussion indicates that there still remains, contrary to Livingstone's (l990, 368) scepticism, a challenge to pose the traditional, maybe desperate, question of

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geographers: "What is geography?". But we have simultaneously to broaden our perspective on the idea of geography. In the following discussion the answer to this question will thus not be traced along traditional lines, i.e. by searching in an essentialist fashion for (1) the nature of the object of geographical research, or (2) the approaches used by the discipline. Instead of aiming to define it in essentialist terms, geography will be comprehended as one specific linguistic sign: the aim is to discuss its denotations8, the ways in which a specific sign, the word geography, becomes interpreted in varying senses or with varying contents in the different contexts where it is employed, how it is employed in the language and the practical, routinized and discursive, reflective actions of geographers and other actors. The aim is to set this specific category, which is used to classify physical and social reality and its institutions, into a historical and social context.

It is important to keep in mind the point made by Livingstone (l990, 368): "the fact of the matter is that both the science of geography and the language of societal discourse are involved in the constitution of each other". This constitution is both historically and spatially specific and becomes more and more important if geography is comprehended in a broader context than that constituted by the academic discipline of geography. The latter, for its part, is the ultimate fixed point for the present discussion, even if the idea of geography is not reduced only to it.

The first aim is to outline the contexts of scientific action in general and those of geographers in particular, and the second to appraise how geography as an institutionalized academic discipline renders diverging interpretations of reality possible. Hence an interesting problem is naturally what kinds of concepts of theory these contexts legitimate. A third purpose is to scrutinize the various meanings of geography, the aim being to deconstruct the idea of geography, that is to scrutinize how our language

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places limits to our thought. Instead of entering the complicated philosophical debate on the idea of deconstructionism, the term is employed here rather in a metaphorical sense (cf. also Dear l988, Sayer l991). Following Moore Milroy (l989), deconstruction is comprehended here as a method which enables a search to be made for the limits of authority and the way by which that authority is constructed and legitimated, what is said and not said, what one can say and cannot say in a given text under given circumstances. It is directed towards identifying the norms underlying practice but which are not inevitably evident even to practitioners (op.cit.). Thus deconstructing the idea of geography calls for a consideration of matters that have been overlooked in earlier debate and thus, inevitably, for an examination of the limits of the language (cf. Dear l988, Paasi l991).

The first problem, i.e. how the contexts of the action and thinking of geographers are shaped, puts emphasis on the inseparable nature of text and context. This is drastically dependent on national contexts (cf. Becher l989, 20-22). As Harvey (l984, 1) puts it, 'the history of our discipline cannot be understood independently of the history of the society in which the practices of geography are embedded'. A key-question is how the discipline is organized and located within the academic and scientific institution of the state in question, e.g. does it lie among the social or natural sciences, how are the legitimate forms of scientific action and thought written in the academic narratives prevailing in the universities, etc.

Notes on the nature of the scientific field

The action of agents in the scientific field takes place in various forms and at various levels. At the most abstract level, the agents manifest themselves through (1) the impersonal texts by which the scientific communication and action ultimately will take

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place. The credibility of the texts is partly associated with the action of these agents as (2) holders of academic positions and thus participants in the power relations which are attached to these positions, i.e. the position of each agent is determined relative to the positions of the other agents in the academic field (cf. Sabour l988, 28; Taylor l976). Furthermore, operation in the scientific field is part of (3) action taking place in broader social contexts, and thus is also connected with the social roles and struggles emerging from this. Action in the scientific field takes place simultaneously at various territorial contexts, or social spaces: locally at departments and faculties, nationally in specific institutional contexts and internationally in various organizations and practices, etc. (cf. Johnston l991). As the territorial context becomes more extensive, the agents manifest themselves more and more often through abstract texts, by which their communication takes place.

Action at a department, a university and in wider academic contexts and involvement in its institutional practices is operation or play in a multilayered scientific field which is deeply characterized by power relations. These power relations are organized within specific scientific disciplines on the basis of authority (notice here the other meanings of the word discipline: order, punishment, penance). Power as such, as Millot (l988) points out, is a social relation which exists whenever a real or symbolic difference is created by individuals and/or groups among individuals and/or groups: it manifests itself firstly in the use of signs and symbols and secondly in maintaining or exceeding existing boundaries. Power should not be regarded as an obstacle to freedom or emancipation but their medium, for all social interaction involves the use of power (Giddens l984). This means that power is a relation the terms of which are continually being challenged. Millot (l988, 680)) writes that there is no code, no norm, no site which is protected from differentation, "symbolic control within differentation strategies

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needs a perpetual redefinition of the signs which mark membership, distance and exclusion".

The power relations sedimented in the hierarchy of institutional positions are of course merely one aspect of the fragments of power involved in scientific action and its external connections. It can be claimed with good reason, for instance, that nowadays the (non-academic) power relations breaking into the scientific field from the outside are increasing, as claims emerge that science should serve someone, e.g. 'economic life', 'society', and so on. As Bourdieu (l985a, 46) aptly points out, it is always a question of claims to serve power. This fact doubtless has an effect on the nature of the texts and narratives that the researchers will construct.

The scientific field is a system of positions which the agents have reached through previous struggles within the social space. An essential feature of this field is the monopoly of scientific authority, which will be defended through the inseparability of technical capacity from social power (Bourdieu l975, 19). According to Bourdieu, we can also discuss scientific competence, which refers to the socially identified ability of researchers to speak and act legitimately in their scientific work. The scientific field is its own censor, which either grants newcomers the right to speak or not. The rules of the field do not legimate themselves: they are based on expressed or unexpressed agreements between the players - although this does not mean that the players should necessarily find these rules continually before them. The rules or ideologies the silent rhetoric of practice - can be historically deposited in the communicative practices of the field, and it is not necessary to declare them openly to all agents (cf. Lyotard l985, 21, Simons l989, 3).

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The field of a scientific discipline is never static, but it is characterized by a continuing state of ferment and struggle over various forms of capital (intellectual, cultural, symbolic, etc.). Conflicts exists between single researchers and between whole 'schools', who fight over legitimate status and prestige in the field (Sabour l988, 30-33, Becher l989, 57). Anomalies, to employ the term coined by Kuhn (l970), emerge through this struggle - observations and arguments that are against the prevailing paradigms, and through which scientific thought and research practice will continually be reshaped.

A scientific field cannot be reduced merely to the language and power relations which structure it. The field is a totality of texts, where texts do not refer only to spoken or written texts but to the whole academic 'semiosphere'9, the continuum of systems of symbols (academic degrees, positions, rituals, etc.), through which the power relations are canonized, ritualized and extended outside the scientific field. It should also be noted that the scope of the field is not static either, as the boundaries between fields are changing continually, as are the codes and themes of scientific action which are canonized in the practices of the field. A fitting illustration of this is the recent rediscovery of geography within the social sciences.

The contexts of geography

Geography is a sign which is used to classify reality and employed in various senses as a collectively adopted and specialized part of the linguistic system of distinctions. These distinctions and interpretations are highly context-dependent, since a sign has different denotations for actors operating in various contexts. Thus the ideas of geography adopted by ordinary people, professional geographers, natural scientists or sociologists obviously differ markedly from each other, since these ideas are

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connected in varying ways with the linguistic classification systems that emerge from the social roles of these actors and the contexts of their action. Furthermore the meanings associated with this linguistic sign will differ from each other in various languages and academic schools. As we have seen above, the relations between geography and social theory, for instance, have created new denotations for the whole idea of geography in the Anglo-American world since the l970s, geography being more and more often identified as a social science - at least by geographers themselves. Also, geography refers to the necessarily spatial constitution of social practice.

One specific idea of geography is that it is also part of the personality and identity of the agent dealing with the sign and of the abilities of that agent to communicate. Every (professional) geographer operating in the field of the discipline aims at strengthening the symbolic capital which he or she regards as valuable in the field. The accumulation of symbolic capital in the field of some specific social action is not directed merely towards subtle, cynical profit-seeking at the expense of others, for actors do not necessarily realize (or at least confess) their aspirations for this (Bourdieu l985a, cf. Becher l989, 53). Instead, there is reason to put emphasis on the horizon of experience, which is based on the personal history of each actor. Not all agents in the field shape the reality (of the field) in the same manner, even if certain ideal expressions as regards the nature of scientific action (striving for objectivity, the ideal of internationalism) and the aims of that action [generalizing, communicativity, truth (real or apparent), argumentation, etc.] are commonly perceived as constituents of their legitimate language and as constituents of the rhetorical construction of the scientific ethos which binds researchers both technically and morally (Prelli 1989).

The idea of geography thus has no universal meanings which are independent of interpretors or contexts. There is no ready-made, straightforward object or territory in

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reality which the idea of geography covers. This fact does not easily manifest itself in the professional practice and experience of geographers, however. To clarify and illustrate the problematic nature of geography, an idea of 3 geographies will be put forward. These can be distinguished from each other as abstractions, although in practice they are inseparable, since they are produced and reproduced continually in human action. They do not refer to the traditional division between physical, human and regional geography, nor is the idea of geography reduced to various uses of geographical knowledge. Rather the problematization of these geographies and the questions arising from this differ from each other with regard to their ontological (how we comprehend the essence of the reality we are reflecting and in which we are acting) and epistemological (how and what we can know from this reality) horizons. The point is that the problematic character of geography is above all connected with the language through which the idea is interpreted, and this language is the basis upon which our practical and discursive 'geographical' action, vocabularies and truths are founded. This also broadens the perspective well beyond the academic geography.

Spatiality, or geographicality (and history), is the fundamental constituent of human existence, or Being-in-the-World, and is inseparable from human action and thought. Geography 1 (G1) comprises this fundamental realm. Geography 2 (G2) is a specific social institution or field which has been established as part of the academic division of labour to maintain specific social functions in the reproduction of society and in the signification of various social practices. Geographers are deeply involved in the social production of significance. Through communicative practices they signify and thus legitimate, they have a symbolic power to demonstrate things and make people believe in them, and to reveal what is vague and unformulated in the natural and social world (cf. Bourdieu l990, 146). Geographers, as intellectuals, are a dominated

24

fraction of the dominant class. They hold the power and privileges conferred by the possession of specific cultural capital, but they are dominated in their relations with those who hold economic and political power (cf. op.cit.144-145). As bearers of the institutional positions prevailing in the realm of Geography 2, they are potentially powerful and important contributors to the whole question of spatiality and its meanings (cf. Harvey l990, 432). Geography 3 (G3) is a realm expressing intellectual action and conceptual interpretations emerging on the basis of G1 and G2 and it is also a realm in which the spatial language and vocabularies that other social scientists use in the analysis of G1 are constituted. Moreover, it is a realm in which a symbolic struggle over legitimate concepts and conceptualizations, philosophies and methodologies is continually taking place.

Geography 1: the geographicality/spatiality of reality

In its simpliest form, G1 refers to the way in which various phenomena - facts and stereotypes - of physical, cultural and social reality are distributed and located on the earth. The mastering of this collection of information - extending varying distances away from the sphere of daily experience - is necessary for all human beings operating in social interaction. In fact, the spatial and temporal organization of social action is the fundamental constituent of that action (cf. geography as necessary knowledge in Taylor l986). This is also the background for the conclusions of some humanistic geographers, according to which all people are to some extent geographers (see Wright 1947, Lowenthal l961, Tuan l990). All human beings employ in their practical and discursive consciousness continually changing mental 'maps', which they can even symbolize in words, diagrams or maps. These are parts of cultures, or maps of meaning, through which the world is made intelligible (Jackson l989, 2). Nevertheless we have to be careful with expressions like those made by humanistic

25

geographers, for ultra-whig interpretations of the idea of geography can easily lead to misunderstandings as regards the essence and public image of the academic discipline, which cannot be reduced to G1.

Superficially, G1 appears to be a neutral collection of facts in the realms of nature, culture and social reality, which can be approached empirically, and also, doxa, everyday knowledge, which is typically characterized by beliefs and stereotypes, rather than episteme, reflected theoretical knowledge (cf. Heller l984, 203-205). Historically, however, G1 has never been merely a clean, innocent collection of empirical knowledge.

The form and content of geographical knowledge cannot be comprehended independently of the social basis for the production and use of that knowledge (Harvey l984). Even before the institutionalization of geography as an established discipline, explorers and early 'geographers', apart from producing knowledge on the basis of naive empiricism, were engaged more or less directly in organizing the political and strategic power relations of the world. Besides producing necessary and popular knowledge, they also created gainful, powerful knowledge (cf. Taylor l986, see also Foucault l980, 75). It was during this process that geographical knowledge became, as Harvey (l989, 244) states, a valued commodity in a society which was becoming more and more profit-conscious. The early geographers were often working under clear external orders from the authorities, just as within geopolitics these interests have often been engendered by the state - providing the ultimate basis for the establishment of academic geography. In the present situation we confront G1 in a more complicated shape. The dynamics and hierarchies, the scales of socio-spatial (power) relations, the roles of distance and the content of experience are continually and dramatically changing and differentiating. As regards the role of geography in

26

modern social theory, Smith's (l990a, 177) comment hits the target: the revival of space in social theory can scarcely be said to be unproblematic, for it necessarily involves basic political opposition over "who controls geographical knowledge, who uses it and how, and how is it produced and for whom".

The signs and language produced by agents operating with G1, cartography for instance, have always been social powers which have afforded their users a possibility of manipulation (Harley l989, Gregory l989b, in geopolitics see Paasi l990)10. Olsson (l990, 113) puts forward a rhetorical question, what else is geography than the drawing of lines and their interpretation? The ultimate national task of geographers has always been to produce tools for the distinction between semiospheres, various cultures, races, etc. (cf. Jackson l990, 138-140). One basic category of geographical thought, region, effectively implies the second significant category, the boundary. When regions are comprehended as social categories, the social heart of the matter is the idea of territoriality - and the social heart of territoriality is power (Sack l983, Paasi l986, l991). But we have to bear in mind that "the regio and its frontiers (fines) are merely the dead trace of the act of authority which consists in circumscribing the country, the territory (which is also called fines), in imposing the legitimate, known and recognized definition (another sense of finis) of frontiers and terri-tory - in short, the source of legitimate di-vision of the social world" (Bourdieu l991, 222) As already noted, when claims are made for science to serve something, the ultimate claim is to serve power. This claim has obviously been directed at geographers much more often than at representatives of any other discipline.

G1 is not only the object for geographers - in principle 'geographers' as professional academics do not inevitably belong in this framework. G1 is the reality from which all

27

empirical or factual sciences acquire the concrete content of their studies. This fact is the point of departure for the reassertion of space in social theory and for the increase in interdisciplinary research (see Soja l989a, Lash & Urry 1987, Harvey l989, Lash l990). The ultimate question from this perspective is how the social production of space, spatial features or geography will be constituted under specific historical conditions. The question of power and its role in the constitution of what is spatial is deeply implicated in G1 in this respect, too.

The idea of G1 thus emerges from the fact that the natural and social reality is spatially constituted. Even if social reality is simultaneously historically constituted, G1 does not inevitably refer to the role of history in this constitution. This fact has been important as regards the practices of academic geographers, for as is well known, the distinction made by Kant (l923) between time and space was for a long time employed by the geographers of the chorological school as the basic argument for legitimating the discipline, and the idea of spatial separatism was also very prominent in later conceptualizations as regards the methodology of geography. The historical perspective was adopted by historical geographers but the historical constitution of social reality was realized only during the rise of political-economic perspectives (see Soja l989a, l989b). The idea of G1 does not contain any epistemological demarcations, i.e. indications of how we can approach the phenomena and processes of geographical reality by means of theoretical and empirical research and what we can know from it. These demarcations are constructed through the struggle within the scientific fields. As a logical conclusion, it can be claimed that to comprehend the geographical reality as being spatially (and historically) contingent is not an expression of the field of any specific scientific discipline. This is the ultimate explanation for why geography has become one of the keywords in social theory. A more concrete basis was of course spatial transformation, or changing geography of social reality

28

perceivable in societies, which has accelerated the relative decline in the spatial role of academic geography and forced geographers to find new interpretations for these processes. The most important agents constituting the language necessary for comprehending these socio-spatial changes thus come from another geographical realm, G2.

Geography 2: institution and institutional practices

The second essential denotation of the idea of geography is the academic institution. G1 does not inevitably presume the existence of geographers, and there is in fact no necessity for geography at all (Granö 1981, 65). But the importance of G1, national and international passions and power relations in its organization, and the struggle over various resources, ultimately gave rise to geography as a social institution, and this also created geographers and their own institutions: the geographer as a professional in the social and academic division of labour enters the stage, the occupation is identified and supported - it becomes a profession based upon specialized knowledge, so that entry to the field is restricted and effectively controlled (cf. Taylor l976, 1985a, l986, 447). Here we talk literally, to employ the terms of Bourdieu (l990), about the 'social space' of geography (G2). Modern geographical societies for professionals are also part of this spezialization. One tension in the history of geography has been that between professional and general geographical societies (Taylor l986, 447), the latter having been an expression of organization around G1, the former an expression of organization on the basis of G2.

In a fragmented world, geographers are nowadays more often 'specialists' - planners, teachers, etc. But at the same time geographers operating in the context of the academic institution are consciously or unconsciously participating in the continuous

29

production and reproduction of the discipline, the larger socio-spatial consciousness and the state. Whereas G1 refers predominantly to the horizontal dimension of spatiality, that is the material basis and spiritual continuity of human existence, the fundamental task provided for geographers (G2) by the state is to transform this horizontal space into vertical representations of the physical world (resources) and social reality to be employed in various social practices (economy, politics, administration). It is this that makes the question of scales, territoriality and power so essential in the work of geographers11.

Taylor (l985b, cf. Smith l990a) makes a distinction between three essential geographical scales, i.e. those of experience, ideology and reality. The first of these refers to the urban (or local) sphere, the second to the state and the third to the global space. The production and reproduction of G2 has always been one of the most effective servants on the axis between the state and various territorial ideologies, especially nationalism. The basic motive for establishing geography as an academic subject was the production and reproduction of national consciousness and external strategical and political motives (information about colonies, mapping). This took place by collecting and transforming material from G1 into descriptive and narrative forms. The result was - since geography was not originally a social science - to produce a non-contradictory picture of the reality, which put emphasis on the role of geography as a central medium of social control and integration (cf. Thrift l989). Geography has thus been ultimately a systemic discipline, the medium for which has been the neutral, value-free language of natural science. This naturalism characterized much of geography up to l960s and does so even now (Gregory l989b, 352), but more critical and anti-systemic languages have emerged within geography since l970 (see Soja l989a, l989b).

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There also exists another fundamental feature of power relations in the field of geography, namely that the social space of G2 is a hierarchically organized space, and also a gendered space which is very unevenly developed. 'Geographers have never', McDowell (l989, 136) writes, 'had much to say about women'. This is a very complicated problem, of course, but one obvious reason for this is the fact that the geographers holding the positions and power at the 'top' of the hierarchy of the social space are males. This can be seen very effectively from a sample of 1166 full Professors from various countries, which indicates that only 5% percent of them are females13. It can be claimed without any exaggeration that the social space of geography is necessarily a realm of masculine (i.e. 'neutral') practices and values, which dominantly manifest themselves in the reproduction of the institution, and the practical and discursive action and language of geographers. Even the most avantgardist geographers writing actively in the field of social theory have problems in exceeding the patriarchal relations existing in the institutions and social practices of society (see the review by Massey, l991b, of the recent books of Soja, 1989, and Harvey, l989).

The question "What is geography" belongs essentially to G2. Nowadays, when a deep fragmentation prevails in geography, this question is posed less and less often. A nonproblematic, safe answer to it is G2 itself: the existence of the institution. The history of institutional structures is always more sluggish than the history of individuals, though the latter produce and reproduce the former in various social practices. Partly because of this longer duration, institutions have social power over individual actors - not necessarily causal power but power emerging from a more or less vaguely felt sense of collective goals. I call it the teleology of practical consciousness, and it is based on the fact noted by Bourdieu (l985a, 107, cf. Bourdieu l990, 8-9) that all actors operating in a specific field have some fundamental common advantages which emerge from

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the existence of the field itself. In the scientific field these are typically positions, resources, and power, i.e. different forms of capital. The collective solidarity which lies behind all conflicts emerge from this basis. But as Bourdieu (l985a, p.107) writes, partial revolutions which take place in a field, "do not make unquestionable the foundations of the game, their fundamental axiomatic, the cornerstone of ultimate beliefs, on which the whole game rests". This is the ultimate reason why the persistent efforts of Eliot Hurst (l985), for example, to dissassemble, de-define and reject geography are doomed to fail. This rejection will never emerge from the social institution of geography itself.

The general observations on academic fields presented on the previous pages also apply to geography. The relations between institutions and agents are not mechanistic and deterministic since agents produce and reproduce institutional roles both through discursive action and through practical consciousness. In the case of G2, this means simply that

the

institution

has certain

in-written, legitime 'ontologies' and

epistemologies through which the scientific routines are expected to become established. In this respect the logic of long duration embodied in the institutional practices also constitute the limits of our discursive and practical consciousness, as well as unconsciousness. Those having the monopoly of symbolic capital often prefer orthodox strategies, while those who have less symbolic capital usually adapt the situation or are driven to heretical strategies (see Bourdieu l985a, 106). As Bourdieu (l975) points, every scientific choice, whether in research themes, methods, publication, etc., is a political strategic investment directed at maximising scientific profits. Our attachment to certain concepts of space and time are also political decisions in this respect (cf. Harvey l990, 432). But as regards the development of geography, this also potentially underlines the role of new generations in the development of science (cf. Johnston l987, 237, Becher l989, 71-74) 14.

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"Geography is what geographers do", it has been claimed. In the same spirit Geertz (l973, 5) states that 'if you want to understand what a science is, you should look in the first instance not at its theories or its findings, and certainly not at what its apologists say about it; you should look at what the practitioners of it do". Nevertheless it is obvious on the basis of the above discussion that both the comment on geography and Geertz's statement are onesided and not by any means as pluralistic as they would superficially appear to be. The reason for this is that it is not sensible to reduce the question of the essence of a discipline to its immediate phenomenal surface, i.e. what researchers (the engaged crew) are doing at a specific moment. Professionalism in the university culture is the dominant power shaping our thought and conduct. This power, writes Hariman (l989, 212), has become more a repressive than a productive power. A specific discipline should thus also contain things that the researchers do not do, maybe because of the traditional orthodox ways of thinking, but things that are nevertheless potentially interesting and important in research (cf. Scott & SimpsonHousley l989, 234). The geography of the world is continually changing and so should be the world of geography.

Dear (l988, cf. Harvey l990) states ironically that the only thing connecting the practitioners of the fragmented field of human geography today is their affection for positivism. Positivism has doubtless been the most legitimate philosophical basis which has been canonized into the institutional practices of geographical work. Nevertheless in the case of research practice the right expression would in fact be empiricism, the most common and longstanding concept of 'theory' that geographers have adopted. Most research in both physical and human geography is still based on induction and aims at describing, interpreting and explaining the regional features of nature, culture and social reality within G1 insofar as these are empirically observable to the researcher.

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The researchers do not in this case have any specific theoretical schema, even if there may exist a pre-understanding adopted in the course of scientific socialization (the observations are theory-laden in this respect). What is called theory refers usually in fact to empirical categories connected to observable phenomena. The unreflected philosophical background for these studies - since the orthodox supporters of this way of thinking are usually ready to leave philosophy to the philosophers -is empiricism. Those acting outside the field of geography regard these observations, which form a collection of facts from G1, as the whole of geography, the discipline included (see, for instance, the view of Bourdieu l985a, l988 on geography). The role of the phenomena of G1 in the constitution of geographical research practice is thus strong. Empiristic research has been typical in traditional geography but it is possible that it will become still more common since (applied) geographical research, which is directed to instrumental purposes, appears to be gaining in prevalence in both physical and human geography.

Those labelling themselves actively as positivists - who are obviously very few in modern human geography - usually start out from theory (i.e. previous generalizations) and aim to test the observable phenomena of the empirical world against these frames. Theory is thus comprehended as an organizing framework for facts (cf. Sayer l984, 49). The role of theory is admitted, but theory is thus understood as a collection of empirical generalizations and concepts provided by earlier research. The formation of concepts often lends to operationalism, and the scientific method is understood to be common to both the natural and the social sciences, the aim being to produce general laws. The geographical world created by this process is a world of facts and generalizations. Because of this interest in theory, the role of G1 in constituting the research practice is not so essential as in empiricist research. Nevertheless, the

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observable world is more often approached in practice to test theories than to create them.

A decade ago Pred (l980, 49) asked why most human geographers only explore things and categories of behaviour that are visible or measurable and frozen in past or present time rather than seeking the invisible relations, structures and processes without which these transitory things and categories of behaviour would not be possible. The third concept of theory, which can be labelled as concrete research15, is an answer to this question from the 1980s. It lays stress on theory as conceptualization, not as a ready-made framework in which the reseacher arranges the data (cf. Sayer l984). The idea of theorization is to produce a series of powerful concepts and categories which are conceptualized in relation to each other and not reduced to empirical observations, and through which the time or space specific characters of geographical reality can be controlled as objects of analysis. The research process begins with theorization and consists of a dialogue between abstractions and concrete reality. Observations are thus theoretically laden but also practically constituted, and conceptual-theoretical frameworks and practical interests are necessarily historically contingent (see Niiniluoto l990, 52).

Whereas the concepts of theory discussed above begin with assumptions which reduce G1 to events and phenomena, concrete research comprehends the world as something more complicated and diversified, in that there also exist various mechanisms and structures which can be comprehended merely through abstractions defined in relation to each other. These mechanisms and structures are essential constituents of the geographical world, constituting both material spatial practices, representations of space (perception) and spaces of representations (imagination) (cf. Harvey l989, 218-225). The methodological trend in analysing this complex world

35

seems to be exceeding the traditional theoretical frames which have dominated much of geographical thinking up to the end of l980s (e.g. structuralism, individualism). As Gregory (l989a, 92) puts it, geographers need to be armed with a new theoretical sensitivity towards the world in which we live and to the ways in which we represent it. This idea of theory is essential for emancipatory research, and the constitution of G3 is fundamental for putting this into practice.

Geography 3: intellectual action and categories

G3 expresses the most abstract way in which the idea of geography will be approached in this paper, referring to intellectual actions and categories which are produced and reproduced through this action. The fundamental idea of distinguishing G3 from the other two geographies is that in this way geography can also be comprehended as a set of social and linguistic practices abstracted from national institutions and actors operating in these contexts. The distinction can be made only at the level of abstractions, since the practices constituting G3 are typically bound to roles associated with these institutions (academic positions, superviser/student etc.). As we saw, these roles are of different status and permanence, and it is through them that the practices of actors are controlled and constituted and the boundaries of the legitimate in relation to prevailing practices are reproduced. The discourses producing and reproducing G3 are thus socially and ideologically constructed. Ideally, G3 is the international context of geography, where the basic concepts and strategies - a necessary basis for the communication of geographers - in principle will be developed continually. In principle - since in practice the inputs into G3 come in most cases from national scientific institutions and organizations involved with them (systems of resources, control, execution and exploitation).

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If G1 refers to the socio-spatial and historical construction of human existence and G2 to geography as a social institution, G3 is basically an epistemological field. The categories produced and reproduced within it are historically and spatially contingent, for even though the physical expressions of the signs created may last, the denotations associated with them will be continually changing as an expression of the transformation taking place in the time-space constitution of the geographical reality (G1) (the ideas of space, region and place, for instance) and as an expression of the continual struggle over the symbolic capital which is bound up in the defining of these 'vocabularies'. It is here that the language, or vocabularies will be constituted developed and reproduced - by which geographers, wherever they act, can at least potentially communicate with each other and with those operating outside the scientific field. It should nevertheless be noted that every text is contextual (Olsson l987). Discourse can take place only through language, and language is the basis in and through which - as geographers and human beings - we exist and observe the world. It is through language that our sense of ourselves as distinct subjectivities is constituted (Clegg l989, 151; Folch-Serra l990, 225).

The language of geography is composed of certain keywords, and their relations to each other and languages in general (everyday language, mathematical languages). This language and its vocabularies are continually changing and its concepts are reinterpretated in research practice (cf. Mead l980, 292; Massey l985, 9). Language is not, as we saw, a neutral realm. Much of the action of geographers consists of the production and reproduction of it and is aimed at signifying by using and dominating it, in order to legitimate their discourses. Various categories define the visible and the invisible, the thinkable and the unthinkable, some categories hide as much as they reveal or reveal only by hiding (Bourdieu 1988/89).

37

On the basis of the history of geographical thought - as well as of current debates on space, localities, regions etc., in which geographers continually aim at redefining these categories - these key-words seem to include 1) spatial categories such as space, region, locality and place (and their derivates such as location, distance, accessibility...), 2) the concept of nature and culture and their visual-aesthetic combination 3) landscape. The development of humanistic and political economy perspectives have introduced new categories such as society (state, nation, civil society...), economy, politics and administration into the debate on these fundamental categories. The various competing methodological approaches that the geographers adopt, develop and defend to maintain and increase their symbolic capital lay stress on various aspects of these categories. The problems of individuality, subjectivity, gender, ideology, consciousness, materiality, class, capital, practice, production, reproduction, etc. have thus become key-words in the vocabulary of geographical discource since the l970s, and the idea of postmodernism has now become a totem for those identifying themselves with the recent debate in social theory16.

These categories are by no means the monopoly of geographers. As recent interdisciplinary debate on spatial categories implies, those operating in other disciplines also aim at the continual definition and interpretion of some of these categories outside the intellectual contexts provided by the discipline of geography. This conceptual rapproachment has been able to emerge as a result of common interest and cooperation, partly separately from academic geography.

The conceptual fragmentation of geography thus takes place in G3, too. To some extent this fragmentation is obviously necessary for the accumulation of knowledge and for the rise of new theoretical perspectives. Nevertheless, as Johnston (l986, 450) points out, this fragmentation can also lead to chaotic conceptions, abstractions from a

38

whole of parts that cannot be treated either as internally homogeneous or as sufficiently separate from the rest of the whole to merit independent analysis. Fragmentation is, Johnston goes on, only defensible if it is preceded and followed by synthesis. Nevertheless this synthesis should emerge from heterodoxy rather than from orthodoxy.

Geographies and geographical practice: a short illustration

As the previous discussion indicates, there are several geographies which emerge from the geographical realms discussed above and which are both manifestations of social practice and objects of theoretical discourse. The revival of the categories of space, region, geography, etc., which has taken place over the past decades in the cultural and social sciences is based on a problematization of G1, and has not necessarily had much to do with G2, the academic discipline, even though geographers themselves have been actively entering into the field of social theory and thus have broadened the scope of their field and redefined its relations to others in the social sciences (cf. Urry l989, 306).

There have been many examples of the rediscovery of spatial effects outside academic geography. The interview with Foucault (l980), for instance, is a fitting illustration of discourse in which reflection on geography reveals to him its role in the constitution of social structures. At the beginning of the interview Foucault has an indifferent attitude towards the whole idea of geography, but finally he states that the problems of geography are in fact essential as regards his theoretical arguments. His 'geography' refers to G1 and is essential for the organization of power relations. Foucault does not make any distinction between G1 and G2, as the discipline of geography seems not to interest him, and he also does not explicitly discuss G3, even

39

though he metaphorically discusses the importance of geography and thus of space. Foucault's (l984, l986) other texts appear to concentrate on G1, too.

This new situation provides several possibilities for academic geographers as agents and for the strategies they choose when competing in the field of social theory. As we saw, geographers are powerful contributors to the question of the nature of spatiality and to the creation of the language employed to comprehend the essence of what is spatial outside academic geography. The extreme strategies are obvious: to be a geographer who aims at theoretical interpretion of the changing geography of the world and in this way change the world of geography but acquire a relatively low social scientific public image or, at the other extreme, to be a social scientist who aims at theoretical interpretation of the changing geography of the world and in this way change the world (of spatialized social theory) without paying much attention to the discipline of geography. There exist several illustrations of these strategies. I take up two influental examples, the books by Soja (l989a) and Harvey (l989) on postmodernism, which take us back to the beginning of this article and to the themes which have emerged in this debate: the changing geography of social reality, the changing role of the science and discipline of geography and, finally, the changing relations of the scientific fields interested in space. There have been several throughgoing reviews and critiques of the contents, arguments and style of these books (Massey l991b, Deutsche l991, Relph l991). I will look briefly at the idea of geograph/y/ical/ity they reflect in the framework put forward above. As a whole, both of these books broaden the scope of traditional geographical discourse considerably, but they do so in quite different ways.

Soja (l989a), in his construction of postmodern critical human geography, aims explicitly at redefining geography and creating a new conceptual content for the

40

discipline of human geography. Moreover, he identifies himself strongly with the ideas and even persons of some authors who have been eminent in the postmodern debate (see the examples of Massey l991b) and makes a detailed review of the ideas of some social theorists (e.g. Foucault, Giddens). His method for geographicalizing social theory and social theorizing geography is problematic. He interprets Foucault fairly appropriately and geographicalizes his metaphorical ideas of space perhaps longer than would be necessary, and he is finally even ready to label Foucault as a 'postmodern geographer' malgré lui (similarly as he labels John Berger as an 'art geographer'). Nevertheless Foucault does not put emphasis on G2, the academic institution, in which the agents called geographers act any more than many others who are interested in the geographical (G1) construction of social reality. By his method Soja is more or less consciously writing Geography (G2) into the field of social theory and potentially influencing its symbolic capital among social scientists.

An extreme opposite example is the geographer David Harvey (l989), whose book on "The Condition of Postmodernity" analyses profoundly the change in geography (G1) from the Enlightenment to the present postmodern condition in a historical frame and tries especially to contextualize these developments in the framework of socioeconomic relations. It is interesting that in this thoroughly geographical book Harvey does not refer at all to G2 or the challenges that the changing G1 raise for the discipline of geography. In fact there is no sign in the text that the book has been written by a geographer. This is a pity for the public (social science) image of the academic geography, since Harvey is doubtedly creating a new language for social science geographical research (G3). This is not a problem for Harvey's own public image in the field of social theory, of course, where the prestige of G2 has for a long time been relatively low.

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DISCUSSION

The present article indicates that the geographical practice represented by professional geographers is only one possible element in the idea of geograph/y/cality. Geographers do not have any monopoly or privileges over the analysis of this realm. In order to survive among the emerging social sciences actively engaged in analysing the geographical world, professional geographers have to pick up the gauntlet and develop new conceptualizations and strategies for concrete research, since they are in a key position for ascribing significance to the sign 'geography'. Some possible problems, which also appear to be of importance for geographical research, will be discussed in this final chapter.

The most interesting challenges appear to be emerging from the rapidly developing field of spatialized social theory and its construction to reveal the processes which are taking place in the reshaping of economics, politics and culture. The continually increasing role of representational spaces will put stress on the cultural and social factors, which, on the other hand, will put emphasis on various demarcations and distinctions - even if the distinctions between categories such as object and subject, absolute and relative, etc., are now being challenged (see Relph l991). The constitutive role of politics in various social and cultural processes turns our attention towards the politics of socio-spatial distinctions. The second challenge for geographers is associated with the rapid changes in representations and their material basis. How are these constructed contextually and what are the mechanisms that maintain them? One more future challenge will quite obviously be the increasing destruction of the traditional boundaries between various disciplines. The new overlapping research themes do not necessary belong to the property of any specific field. This will obviously be the end of spatial separatism for geography.

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The contributions of geographers already cross the traditional barriers in many cases. What will be needed in the future is a pluralistic attitude towards various philosophies and methodologies, which will also be a challenge for geographers (cf. Gregory l989a, Taylor l991a, Livingstone l990). Pluralism should not mean uncritical eclecticism, however. A genuine pluralism will free geographers from the autocracy of the traditional methodological narratives or '-isms' which have tended to dominate geographical thought, in order to adopt more sensitive strategies, methods and interpretations. There is an obvious need, as pointed out by Sayer (l989a, 305), for more flexible conceptual systems - and maybe for the scrutiny for rhetorics in geography.

There are also serious threats for geography if the arguments put forward by postmodernist authors (e.g. Lyotard l985) are true. Firstly, there is a danger that geographical work will be directed more and more towards instrumental goals and geographers will lose the critical and emancipatory role which they have been developing for some decades. It is important to continue the search for emancipatory potential in the discipline and its applications (e.g. its role in education). Secondly, there is a risk that geographers will become historically less sensitive. This risk is obvious if geographers actively adopt some of the fundamental premises of the ideology of postmodernism, e.g. the 'loss' of general frames and 'Grand narratives'. This can lead a one-sided concentration on small-scale themes, which would be a loss after the contributions of perspectives offered by political economics. There remains one more challenge, however, how to create abstractions through which one can fruitfully interpret and explain the general by the unique and the unique by the general.

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Acknowledgements

The first drafts of this article were presented years ago at seminars at Uppsala and Utrecht in l991. I am greatly indebted to the participants of these meetings for comments and discussions, and also wish to extent my deepest gratitude to Vincent Berdoulay, Anne Buttimer, Olavi Granö, M`hammed Sabour, Mike Savage and Peter J. Taylor who have later commented on various drafts of the paper.

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References

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Notes

1. The intellectual and historical background for this process has been traced in several articles in Gregory & Urry (l985) and Peet & Thrift (l989a). 2. A more detailed historical analysis of these trends emerging from the perspective of social theory and their relations to specific research themes can be found e.g. in Peet & Thrift (l989), especially in the articles of Soja (l989b, see also Soja l989a) and Urry (l989). 3. Some authors question if there exists on the whole any 'postmodern condition', but instead a rather confusing discourse generated by the disappointed revolutionary generation of '68 which has been incorporated into the new middle class - 'the children of Marx and Coca-Cola' (see Callinicos l989, 162171, cf. also Curry l991). 4. The postmodern condition has been characterized as the end of such 'Grand narratives' as ideology, art, social class, Leninism, social democracy or the welfare state - the ideological family resemblance with many classical sociological themes is thus obvious (cf. Jameson l984) 5. These trends are evident in recent geographical research, for instance, in endeavours to develop theoretically more sensitive and interpretative approaches (see Eyles & Smith l988, Gregory l989b, Sayer l989a), or in aspirations to integrate humanistic approaches with social theory perspectives (Kobayashi & Mackenzie l989). 6. The idea of symbolic capital has been developed especially in Bourdieu's thought. It refers to those forms of reputation, prestige, celebrity and talent which, once established and recognized by others, provide its owner with credit, esteem and honour - the symbolic capital thus exists in the other's eyes (see Sabour l988, 36). Geography is one of the disciplines Bourdieu refers to when discussing the differences between academic fields. Both his analysis of various fields (Bourdieu l988) and his occasional notes on geography ("one cannot become a philosopher with the stakes of geographers", Bourdieu, l985a, 105) are indicative of the nature of geography's prestige and image, which emerges on account of its empiricist and descriptive tradition. It is interesting that in his explicit discussion of the idea of region and the constitution of regional identities, Bourdieu does not refer at all to geography. Citing Paul Bois, Bourdieu (1991, 287) writes, "what makes the region is not space but time and history". 7. A fitting illustration of these language problems is Bourdieu's (l985b, l988, l990) idea of social space - i.e. the relations and positions of social actors - and its relations to geographical space, which are by no means straightforward. We can talk firstly about the 'social space of geography', which refers to the positions and power relations of geographers within the field of the discipline and their relations to other scientific fields, for instance. But we can also talk about the 'geography of social space' which refers to the spatial relations and distances constitutive of social space, for example. The latter expression refers to the themes that (social) geographers have typically analysed. 8. The term 'denotation' is employed here to refer to specific literal meanings of a word. It is not merely a question of the 'connotations' of the word (cf. Hall l980, 132-133). 9. I have adopted this expression from Juri Lotman's semiotics, in which no system of signs can operate separately from other systems of signs. All systems are part of a larger continuum of systems of signs: the semiosphere (see Tarasti l990, 9). 10. 50 years ago J.K.Wright (l942, 527) wrote: "Like bombers and submarines, maps are indispensable instruments of war. In the light of the information they provide, momentous strategic decisions are being made today: ships and planes, men and munitions, are being moved. Maps help to form public opinion

53

and build public morale. When the war is over, they will contribute to shaping the thought and action of those responsible for the reconstruction of a shattered world. Hence it is important in these that the nature of the information they set forth should be well understood". 11. This is not meant to be merely a rhetorical statement regarding the territory of academic geography. As Hariman (l989, 218) points out, disciplinary knowledge in general is produced by a process of spatialization, i.e. the basic principle of design is to imagine social reality as a set of continuous spaces described by separate discourses and maintained by observation. The best metaphor for the spatialization of knowledge, Hariman writes, is found in the university itself, which is not only the central institution in the disciplinary system but the epitome of spatial definition, i.e. "knowledge is categorized by colleges, divisions and departments, by disciplines and sub-disciplines, by the curriculum and by the arrangement of books on the library shelves" (see also Foucault l984, 254). 13. This sample was taken from Orbis Geographicus (Ehlers l988) and contains all full Professors from Australia, Austria, Canada, Danemark, Finland, (West-)Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Sweden and USA who could be identified on the basis of the information given in the book. 14. Taylor's (l976) discussion of the rise of quantitative geography is indicative of this. One important generation consists of the 'Young Turks', who forced critical perspectives into the mainstream of geography and promoted the emergence of social theory perspectives (see Urry l989). 15. I do not make a distinction here between abstract research (which considers structures and mechanisms by identifying the causal powers and liabilities inherent in the social object) and concrete research (which explains particular situations and events by showing how structures and mechanisms interact with contingent circumstances) performed under the inspiration of theoretical realism (see Sayer l984, Sarre l987). Concrete research, as it is understood here, thus includes the creation of essential abstractions in specific concrete research contexts. 16. Bourdieu (l988/89) points out that much of our scientific thinking is based on antagonistic pairs (theoreticism/empiricism, object/subject, materialism/idealism, body/mind), which are ultimately grounded in social oppositions (high/low, dominant/dominated etc.) and which can be harmful to scientific practice e.g. as oppositions between disciplines, alternative methodological approaches etc. These antinomies exist, Bourdieu writes, first in objectivity e.g. as academic departments, professional associations, individual researchers identified with different theories, -isms, concepts, methodologies, etc., and secondly they exist in subjectivity, as mental categories, principles of vision and divisions of the social world. These paired oppositions construct the instruments for the construction of reality (Bourdieu l988/89, 777-778).