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Part I
Introduction and overview
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1
How territory shapes social life
MICHAEL DEAR and JENNIFER WOLCH
Society and space: an introduction
The journey along Mulholland Drive, atop the Hollywood Hills, provides one of the world’s great urban vistas. To the south lies the Los Angeles basin, a glittering carpet. To the north, the San Fernando Valley (still part of the City of Los Angeles) unfolds in an equivalent mass of freeways, office towers, and residential subdivisions. There is probably no other place in North America where such an overpowering expression of the human impact on landscape can be witnessed. And yet, the physical landscape cannot be denied. Even in this region of almost 12 million people, the landscape still contains and molds the city.
In this book, we wish to examine how territory shapes social life, and vice versa. Above all else, the chapters contained in this volume provide a convincing argument for the power of geography in shaping human existence. It is impossible to understand human society without accounting for its geographical underpinnings. In this book, we are in search of a theory of territory or “humanly differentiated geographical space.” This search is a direct response to the challenge issued by Scott & Storper in their collection of essays on the geographical anatomy of industrial capitalism. In setting a research agenda, they observe:
The salient feature of the geographical landscape under capitalism is its status as an assemblage of territorial complexes of human labor and emergent social activity. The configuration of this landscape can be understood at three specific levels of analysis. First, it is constituted out of an overarching system of rules of order rooted in the basic relationships of capitalist society.… Secondly, it is the direct manifestation of a set of intricate locational cum spatial processes.… Thirdly, its immediate phenomenal form consists in a congeries of human communities in which the bases of social reproduction and social action are secured (Scott & Storper 1986, 310).
From this, they derive a principal objective for research in human geography: “to grasp the dynamics of the creation, reproduction and transformation of territorial complexes of human labor and social activity” (Scott & Storper 1986).
The chapters in this collection have been written and assembled to address this challenge. However, our book differs significantly from the previous effort by Scott & Storper. In their volume, the contributors focused almost entirely on the relationships of production, work, and territory. In this book, we focus on reproduction and territory. By this term, we mean to encompass the wide range of social relations and social practices which derive from, and which serve to protect and maintain, the basic structures of capitalist society. We are not implying a crude economic determinism in this broad statement. We reject the notion that the economic (base) relations are the primary determinants of socio-political (superstructural) relations. Society is much more complex than this. The formation of territorial outcomes is contingent upon the essentially unpredictable interactions of the spatial with the economic and the political and social/cultural spheres. Moreover, one of our key objectives is to explore how social practices can transcend existing social arrangements, thus making social change a constant part of the everyday life of individuals, communities, and nations.
In sum, this book focuses on the way social life structures territory, and the way territory shapes social life. The interdependencies between these processes – the socio-spatial dialectic – ensure that one cannot be understood without reference to the other. Our emphasis is on the power of geography to affect the social practices of everyday life. We argue that such territory-based practices have the power to protect and maintain (i.e., to reproduce) social relations, but also to transcend these relations to produce significant social change.
No single collection of essays can hope to encompass the entire range of work implied by this research agenda. The remainder of this introductory chapter develops a much simplified framework for the analysis of territory and reproduction. In the next section, some fundamental assumptions concerning territory and reproduction are briefly recounted. Then, our theory of territory and social life is outlined. Finally, an account of the current dynamics of social reproduction in contemporary capitalist society is developed; this provides a framework for understanding the relevance and place of the individual contributions within our general problematic.
Territory and reproduction: conceptual preliminaries
Before we outline our concept of territory and social life, some basic assumptions have to be clarified. These pertain to the two fundamental categories on which our analysis is predicated, namely, territory and reproduction. We shall begin by examining the classical Marxian notion of reproduction in order to demonstrate the major lineage of our approach. However, we shall quickly move from this to a more complex understanding of reproduction, based essentially in the writings of Weber and Foucault inter alia. Second, we provide some elementary statements about the nature of our geographical analysis.
The concept of reproduction
As a point of departure, we adopt the classical Marxist notion of reproduction. Marx noted that “every social process of production is, at the same time, a process of reproduction” (1971, vol. 1, 531). Thus any production process not only produces material objects, but also continually reproduces the associated production and distribution relations (Marx 1971, vol. 3, 857). The concept of reproduction implies much more than the mere replication of existing production processes. Reproduction involves several kinds of continuity and discontinuity in social processes, including: a link between individual capitals and economic subjects; a link among the different levels of the social structure, including the non-economic elements of the production process; and a link between successive historical production processes (Althusser & Balibar 1970, 258–9). Hence, reproduction is the method by which the total social “ensemble,” including modes of circulation, distribution, and consumption, is protected and repeated through time.
Reproduction is a dynamic concept, emphasizing historical continuity during periods of transition. In such transitions, reproduction allows for the replacement and transformation of things, but retains the fundamental relationships. In classical theory, the perpetuation of political, legal and other institutions in support of the economic order may be anticipated, as well as the key relations of the economic sphere. But exactly how is the reproduction of social relations secured? The answer has traditionally been sought in the functioning of the “legal-political and ideological superstructure.” The state apparatus is a primary institutional manifestation of this superstructure. Other important superstructural elements have included the church, which may now have been superseded by the educational establishment. The role of the family has also been stressed.
The effect of reproduction is to perpetuate the social structures of capitalism. Social relations in capitalist society are constituted through a variety of fundamental work- and nonwork-related mechanisms. The division of labor is both a force for consolidation and for fragmentation of class relationships. It favors the formation of classes to the extent that it creates homogeneous groupings. On the other hand, it often implies a specialization of labor functions and, hence, fragmentation within an otherwise homogeneous group. Authority relations occur as a hierarchy of command within the productive enterprise, although non-market elements in society are also ordered to sustain the system of production, circulation, and distribution. Distributive groupings are those relationships which involve common patterns of consumption of material goods. With their concomitant status implications, these goods act to reinforce the separations initiated by differential work-specific capacities (Giddens 1973, Ch. 6).
The social relations of capitalism invariably take on a geographical expression. This can occur in many guises, as in the cases of the structure of nation-states or ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods. What is often less clear is the precise way in which spatial form is related to social forces. Some researchers have argued that technical progress may reduce the role of space; it is not that space is external to the social structure and unaffected by it, but that its specific importance may be diminishing. Others have criticized the tendency to make a fetish of space in urban research (Castells 1976, 1977). However, in our analysis, the central significance of space is emphasized. The organization of space is regarded as a purposeful social product. Hence, it cannot be regarded as a separable structure, with rules of construction and transformation independent of social practice. The organization of space is a vital process in capitalist production and reproduction (Lefebvre 1976).
A concrete example of the socio-spatial dialectic in action may help to illustrate our position. Inequality and poverty are endemic to capitalism, and the facts of geography facilitate their reproduction through generations. Central to this thesis is Hagerstrand’s notion of a “daily-life environment,” composed of residence and/or workplace, and defined by the physical friction of distance plus the social distance of class. Every social group operates within a typical daily “prism,” which, for the disadvantaged, closes into a “prison” of space and resources. Deficiencies in the environment (for instance, limitations on mobility, and the quality of social resources) clearly limit an individual’s potential, or market capacity; and poverty limits access to more favorable environments. A self-reinforcing process thus sets in. It is easy to understand how an individual can carry an imprint of a given environment, and how the daily-life environment can act to transmit inequality.
The focus of human geography
Human behavior is expressed through a complex set of social, political, and economic processes which characterize every society to some degree. Time and space define the two dimensions of a fabric upon which the processes of human existence are inscribed. Our objective in human geography is to understand the simultaneity of social, political, and economic life in time and space. But exactly how can we conceptualize the processes and patterns of human life on the time-space tapestry?
Human landscapes are created by knowledgeable actors (or agents) operating within a specific social context (or structure). The structure-agency relationship is mediated by a series of institutional arrangements which both enable and constrain action. Hence, three “levels of analysis” can be identified: structures, institutions, and agents. Structures include the long-term, deep-seated social practices which govern daily life, such as law and the family. Institutions represent the phenomenal forms of structures, including, for example, the state apparatus. And agents are those influential individual human actors who determine the precise, observable outcomes of any social interaction.
It is impossible to predict the exact geographical or social outcome of the interactions between structure, institution, and agency. Although individual activities are framed within a particular structural context, they can also transform the context itself. Moreover, any outcome is necessarily a consequence of the reciprocal relationship between relatively long-term structural forces and the shorter-term routine practices of individual human agents. Economic, political, and social history is therefore time-specific in that these relationships evolve at different temporal rates; but it is also place-specific because these relationships unfold in recognizable “locales” according to the variable logics of spatial diffusion.
Interaction through space is further complicated by the different scales over which human activities operate. Geographical regions, or locales, are defined by physical or human boundaries which delimit fields of process and interaction. In general terms, the processes of social life may operate at macro- or micro-level scales. We may expect the structure-institution-agency sequence to be replicated (sometimes in different ways) at each scale. So, for instance, national urban structure may be the result of the interaction between global capital and labor relations; but local neighborhood structure may also be defined by a capital-labor relation operating in significantly different ways at the community level.
Any locale is, therefore, at once a complex synthesis of objects, patterns, and processes derived from the simultaneous interaction of different levels of social process, operating at varying geographical scales and chronological stages. It is as though a multi-tiered sequence of events had been telescoped into a single dimension; many levels and scales of process are simply collapsed on to a single territory. But this is precisely the intellectual challenge posed by the “geographical puzzle”: to unravel the complex locale into its constituent elements and processes (for further discussion of these points, see Dear 1988).
Territory and social life: outline of a theory
The organization of capitalist society
We shall focus, for the sake of simplicity, solely upon capitalist societies. Such a society is characterized essentially by the institution of commodity production for profit, and by a fundamental cleavage between a class of capitalists and a class of workers.1 We also assume that we are dealing with “advanced” capitalist society (what some may call “late” capitalism). One of the most significant dimensions of such societies is their organizational complexity. Large bureaucracies are now characteristic of multinational firms and of most state organizations. A highly centralized, extended state apparatus is a dominant element in social relations, which tend increasingly toward corporatist-style arrangements. Capitalist production is increasingly organized on a global scale, which has the effect of allowing remarkably extensive, world-wide adjustments to be made in response to the various crises of capitalist accumulation (for instance, the current era of “post-Fordist” production arrangements). However, somewhat paradoxically, the scale of capitalist mega-organizations also permits a myriad of detailed and varied actions at the local level.
Advanced capitalist societies are conceived as having three spheres of social life. In no particular order, these are: (1) an economic sphere, which is characterized by industrialism, and (axiomatically) is organized on capitalist principles; (2) a political sphere, which is dominated by the state and its efforts at crisis management, social control, and repression, as well as by the whole panoply of institutions of democracy; and (3) a social sphere, which is regarded as the domain of civil society, and is identified separately in order to emphasize the set of social and cultural relations which exist outside the realm of the state or production-determined class cleavages. Each of these three spheres operates autonomously to some degree. No single sphere can ever be entirely independent, and there is a high degree of overlap between the three spheres. Hence, each sphere enjoys only a relative autonomy from the others. The effectiveness of any one sphere at a particular time will depend upon specific local conditions, including the power of the human agents associated with each sphere.
In sum, the social organization of advanced capitalist society is predicated upon three relatively autonomous spheres of social life. Specific time-space configurations (including such diverse outcomes as deindustrialization, disease control, or reading habits) will be related to the dynamics of power and practice within and between the three spheres. The point is not to determine which sphere is pre-eminent in the social practices of advanced capitalism, but to realize that all three spheres are necessarily implicated in the process of reproduction.
Social process
A central dynamic in life is the innate human tendency to strive for security and status, and to protect those gains that have already been achieved. This fundamental human tendency toward self-protection is also projected on to those institutions with which humans identify. This can amount to a joint survival strategy, as when employment will last only as long as the firm is successful. In other cases, identification with a particular cause or belief (as embodied in voluntary or religious organizations) can occur. The net effect of these extensions of human identity on to institutional structures is that people vie for the perpetuation of the institutions as much as for their own self-survival.
Social reproduction (with its emphasis on the perpetuation and maintenance of social relations) occurs when humans are unable to transcend their circumstances, be they personal, institutional, structural or environmental. For instance, a family’s life chances may be restricted, so children follow their parents into menial occupations and limited horizons. Social change occurs when the reproductive cycle is inhibited. Such discontinuities are possible when social practices overcome the strictures of the time-space prism/prison. This can occur in several ways, as in the case of long-term, non-catastrophic evolution of social relations, or through the impact of the unanticip...
