In particular Alan Hudson (Geography, Cambridge U) has posted
some notes about a new approach in the field that should sound
very familiar to xmca-ers, and perhaps worth a look or comment:
" A good starting point - although I've just been re-reading
it and
it's a bit difficult - in thinking about Bourdieu/de Certeau and
others
in relation to 'space' is the opening chapter in Nigel Thrift's
1996
book, published by Sage 'Spatial Formations'. His focus is
theories of
practice and what he calls 'modest theory'. If anyone has read
it, or
gets round to reading it, I'd be very happy to chat about it in
an effort to understand some more!
I can't remember who it was on this list who used the phrase
"spatial
analysis", but I'd be interested in hearing what you understand
by this
phrase. In the discipline I find myself in - Geography - "spatial
analysis" was/is used too refer to a 1960s/70s tradition of
positivisit/quantitative locational analysis, but I feel that the
concept
of spatial analysis can be retrieved and used helpfully. It
depends, in
my opinion, on one's conception of space... and I suppose that
links in
with recent mentions of Lefebvre and the social production of
social space.
...
So, I've been quite reasonably asked - given that I used the
term
'modest theory' without explaining it - what Thrift means by this
expression.
So, armed with my copy of Thrift 1996 I'll have a go at that. He
also
refers to such theory as non-representational theories, in which
the
'focus is 'external', and in which the basic terms and objects
are forged
in a manifold of actions and interactions' (Thrift, 1996, p.6).
Of these non-representational theories he says there are several
main tenets:
1) They throw a critical light on representational theories
2) They valorize practical experience. That is they concern
thought-in-action, presentation rather than representation.
3) They emphasize the particular moment of action, but do not
divorce
this moment of action from context
4) They concern thinking with the entire body, rather than just
the visual
5) They invite scepticism re the linguistic turn, suggesting that
this
has tended to divorce theory from practical reality
6) They involve a different (non covering-law I guess)
understanding of
explanation, in which explanation is about getting to know
something,
getting a handle on something, and in which theories/models are
tools.
(Kind of late-Wittgenstein?)
The above points are those that Thrift makes about non-
representational
thinking. He then, later in the chapter, kind of re-iterates this
in
terms of 'modest theory'. Much the same it seems. However, he
then makes
the following points about such modest theory:
1) ONTOLOGY
- a weak ontology that sees order as produced or not through
action. An
energetic ontology apparently.
2) EPISTEMOLOGY
- a weak epistemology, of situated knowledges, where closure is
not sought.
- 'if a concept depends on a pattern of life, then there must be
some
indefiniteness to it' (Wittgenstein, Thrift p.32)
3) ETHICS
- doesn't like ideal theories of ethics (I, as it happens, still
do!),
but prefers 'the authority of the present case'.
4) THE HUMAN SUBJECT
- multiple, dynamic but only partially decentred
5) THINGS
- the importance of looking at things and they ways in which they
are
used to avoid too much subject-object distinction.
- here he goes into Actor-Network theory in which anything (I
think) is
conceptualized as having agency.
6) CONTEXT
- a radical contextualism, that does not become a parochial
particularism. Rather, the local is made up of intersections of
wider
dynamics/social relations.
I'm afraid, given other pressures on my time and my lack of
expertise,
that that's the best I can do with modest theory at the moment. A
modest effort. ..." [Alan Hudson to Bourdieu List]
-------------
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU