Social Geographies

From Difference to Action

Ruth Panelli

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780761968948, 9780761968931
• eBook ISBN: 9781446233764
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

How do we describe ourselves?

Where have we, do we, will we, live our lives?

Why are the differences between people a source of tension?

How can social change occur?

Social geography can assist in addressing these questions. It provides ways of understanding and living in our contemporary world.

Providing students with the resources to understand both the theoretical and empirical approaches social geographers take when investigating social difference, this text outlines key theoretical approaches and traces the core geographies of difference: class, gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality. It concludes by showing how geographers work across these ideas of difference to understand questions of identity, power and action.

Using illustrative examples from around the world, Social Geographies includes:

- Individual chapters on the main theoretical approaches to difference

- Individual chapters on the key concepts of identity, power and action

- Reviews of the core literature, with suggestions for further reading

- Biographies of key contemporary social geographers

- Glossary of key terms

For students beginning human geography courses, or in social geography modules, this book is the essential primer.

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INTRODUCTIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS

PART I

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Social geography is a body of knowledge and a set of practices by which scholars look at, and seek to understand, the social world. It is a strikingly diverse sub-discipline of human geography that has many overlapping interests with other forms of geography rather than any fixed or strict boundaries. Its diversity occurs since the topics and approaches undertaken have varied over time and according to individual geographers’ interests and politics. Consequently, Introducing Social Geographies: From Difference to Action presents a cameo of that diversity and Part I opens with two chapters that introduce and contextualize the sub-discipline.

Chapter 1 starts by sketching out the types of social relations and places that fascinate social geographers before explaining that (as with other academic knowledge) social geography is an explicitly constructed field of knowledge.This means scholars frequently concentrate on commonly agreed topics – especially the differences and relations between people and the places and spaces they use and shape in creating their lives. It also means social geographers cluster into groups of scholars who practise (pursue, design, construct, promote, and even fight for) certain ways of constructing their social geography. These preferences depend on the context and culture in which they are working (e.g. a British department enthusiastic about the methods and powers of spatial science¹ perspectives in the 1970s, or a Canadian department focused on humanist approaches in the 1980s, or an Australian department energized by poststructural and postcolonial debates and challenges in the 1990s). These contexts and preferences result in individual scholars taking up positions and ‘writing … from somewhere’ (section 1.2), from locations that are physical, cultural, political and epistemological.

A more detailed account of these different approaches to social geography is presented in Chapter 2. This chapter commences with questions about how we can devise projects and knowledge about the social world. It explains how scientific approaches to knowledge have been incorporated in social geography before turning to an overview of the philosophical and theoretical perspectives that have been adopted by different groups of scholars over time. While readers may be tempted to skip this chapter, it is a core foundation for the rest of the book and provides a basis for understanding why geographers have differed in their approaches to topics, e.g. ethnicity, gender, identity and so forth. The chapter also provides two detailed sketches of how individual geographers have tackled and worked their way through the theoretical trends and approaches that have swept across social geography at different times. The chapter closes with further emphasis on the positionality of our thinking and writing about social geography. This provides encouragement in making self-critical reflections and explicit decisions about how we view people, social experiences and the real-life (and academic tensions) that result.

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1. As noted in the Preface, all terms appearing in bold italics are included in the Glossary.

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1	Contemporary Social Geographies: Perspectives on Difference, Identity, Power and Action

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Social geography provokes thought and challenges us with the possibilities and opportunities it provides. It gives us the chance to ask questions, construct explanations – and discover yet more questions – about where and how social differences and interaction occur. Gibson-Graham’s analysis of life in Australian mining towns illustrates some of these possibilities (see Box 1.1). Some social relations between men, women and children appear similar. However, comparisons within towns and states (Queensland, vs New South Wales) show that individual households and groups of women experience mining life – and its social costs – in very different ways.

More generally, social geography inquiries may build from an awareness of contrasting social lives in different suburbs or rural towns; or it may develop from recognizing different behaviours and interaction occurring in a public square, workplace or pub. For me, social geography became relevant after I completed a fourth-year economic geography dissertation and was left with questions about how restructuring in a manufacturing industry affected workers and their families differently in various Australian cities. Gibson-Graham’s (1996a) work, summarized in Box 1.1, raises parallel issues, showing how restructured work conditions affected personal, parental and community relations. This type of geography shows how individual, family and community life is closely linked. Gibson-Graham explores contrasting theories to account for the diverse ways men and women negotiate their economic and social environment, and in some cases, become politically active because of their situations. This initial example emphasizes the fact that social geography can be established wherever there is a variety of people relating in diverse ways and acting to organize their lives in both a material and socio-cultural sense. In these settings, attention to social difference and interaction is usually highlighted as geographers acknowledge that these social differences occur unevenly over space and through the constructions of (and even struggles within) specific places (e.g. in homes, on streets, in workplaces and so forth) (Valentine, 2001).

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Box 1.1 Social conditions and implications of life in Australian coal-mining towns

Katherine Gibson is a geographer who has studied Australian coal-mining for many years. Together with Julie Graham, she investigated both the economic and social processes and changes that have shaped the lives of men, women and children in such industries. In recent years they have written collaboratively as J.K. Gibson-Graham. Excerpts of this work give a useful summary of the social conditions and challenges that these mining communities face. They also illustrate the types of issue social geography often concentrates on. They write:

Men and women in [Australian] mining towns see themselves as engaged in a joint project … a good upbringing for their children, a house of their own on the coast, a comfortable retirement or a different life, … after savings have been accumulated. Commitment to this joint project (and the feudal domestic class process¹ it promotes) is sustained by a discourse of love and companionship between partners. (1996a: 228)

In the late 1980s the coal industry entered a crisis. … With employment levels declining the Combined Mining Unions were forced … to accept the ruling of the Coal Industry Tribunal … and new work practices were instituted in 1988. As part of the move towards greater ‘flexibility’ (for the companies), the new award involved widespread adoption of a new work roster called the seven-day roster. (1996a: 225)²

The effect of this decision on the community and … upon women has been great. For many, the domestic work of women has risen, and the established companionship patterns of mothers, fathers and children have largely been destroyed. (1996a: 226)

The weekdays off between shifts and the long break between roster cycles allow men and their nonworking wives to see each other – but at times that do not coincide with children’s or other friends’ time off. … The seven-day roster has stripped away the activities and notions of the family. (1996a: 228)

In Central Queensland miners’ wives organized no public opposition to the seven-day roster. By contrast in the Hunter Valley, an older established coal-mining region in New South Wales, women successfully organized opposition to its institution on the grounds of its incompatibility with family and community life. (1996a: 230)

1 A ‘feudal’ domestic class refers to arrangements where one partner (usually a woman) contributes labour as a wife and mother that is appropriated by the other partner (usually a man) in return for provision of shelter and social position associated with their conditions as a miner (e.g. access to housing and services).

2 The seven-day roster involved eight-hour shifts on seven consecutive days, afternoons or nights. After seven shifts, workers had one–two days off and at the end of a block of three seven-day shifts they received four days off from work.

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Hamnett (1996: 3) defines social geography as ‘the geography of social structures, social activities and social groups across a wide range of human societies’. Yet it is perhaps more complicated – and more exciting – than that, for social geographers are prepared to investigate the intimate connections and collections of interactions that occur between diverse people and the spaces and places in which this occurs. For instance, with Gibson-Graham, we can ask why some men and women in Australian coal-mining towns faced domestic struggles and divorce, while others worked out patterns of family and social life that absorbed (even accepted) the industry changes. We can also ask why NSW miners’ wives became politically active against the work rosters, while Queensland miners’ wives did not. Questions of this kind invite us to consider issues of gender, class, identity and political agency – some of the concepts that structure the remainder of this book.

Thus, social geography can be thought of as a focused curiosity and an explicit act of constructing (researching, mapping, writing) geographies that:

• recognize forms of social difference and interaction; and
• acknowledge that these differences occur unevenly over space and through the construction of (and even struggles within) specific places.

This type of social geography involves us in choosing appropriate theories and research practices in order to investigate and write work that respects difference and highlights uneven patterns and struggles. These matters are discussed in Chapter 2 since contemporary social geographies have developed from a diverse heritage of theoretical and empiric histories. The chapter will show that debates and tensions arising from this diversity provide a complex but stimulating environment for current work. Coming to terms with these debates is an important step in recognizing that social geographers frequently wish to do more than record, organize and (re)present social differences and interactions. They dare to ask why they occur. For instance, Gibson-Graham (1996a) sought reasons for the enormous hardship being faced by mining families and communities. By working alongside some of these people, Katherine Gibson (1993) also recognized the need to acknowledge and account for the very different relations and choices she found in contrasting coal-mining regions.

In general, by asking why differences occur, social geographers must consider different research perspectives or forms of explanation in order to select and address their questions – and (re)present the answers they construct. Explicitly or not, they position themselves, their practice and their writing in different ways, which in turn are both personal and political acts. These issues are explained further in Chapter 2 as it addresses some of the circumstances surrounding the construction of different geographic knowledges. Social geography is shown to be a creative inquiry that (implicitly or explicitly) negotiates both scientific and political issues associated with establishing academic geographic knowledge.

1.1 BOOK STRUCTURE

In writing this book I have not attempted to produce a comprehensive description of all forms of social geography. Other references and edited collections tackle this job in various ways (see for example Hamnett, 1996; Jackson and Smith, 1984; Pain et al., 2001; Valentine, 2001). Instead, Social Geographies: From Difference of Action presents a specific commentary on social geography as it appears primarily in Anglo-American and Antipodean contexts. The book confines itself to these contexts for two reasons. First, Anglo-American and Antipodean geographies have shared a common, dominating socio-economic system – capitalism. This has influenced the development of different types of geographic theory and the recognition of different research subjects common to the capitalist societies in these countries. Second, social geographies being written beyond Anglo-American and Antipodean contexts are more often considered within studies of (economic) development and (postcolonial) political and cultural geographies. It is beyond the scope of this text to do justice to these literatures although their influence is acknowledged in several sections of this book.

Within these economic, cultural and continental parameters, social geography is presented as a critical but changing social science, and as a purposeful and powerful opportunity to construct a field of valuable social knowledges. Attention is given to how these knowledges are socially constructed; how they draw on different epistemological approaches and practices; and how they are presented from different positions and for different purposes. This diversity is shown through the theoretical tensions discussed in Chapter 2 as well as the specific foci on social differences presented in Chapters 3–6. These latter chapters consider the core axes of social difference shaping contemporary social geographies: class, gender, ethnicity and s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Boxes
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Introductions and Negotiations
• Part II Categories of Social Difference
• Part III Across and Beyond Social Difference
• Part IV Conclusions and Outlooks
• Part V Individual Social Geographies
• Glossary
• References
• Index