Social geography - Key concepts in Social Geography PDF

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Introductory Lecture to Social Geography
Mixed Teachers...

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Social Geography - Week 1 - Key concepts in Social Geography What is social geography? - “The study of social relations and the spatial structures that underpin those relations” (Johnson et al., 2000: 753) - “Social geography is concerned with the ways in which social relations, social identities and social inequalities are produced, their spatial variation, and the role of space in constructing them. It places particular emphasis on the welfare issues which affect people’s lives, and aims to expose the forms of power which lead to social and spatial inequality and oppression’ (Pain et al., 2001: 1) - Looking for a precise argument in your writing - The latter sentence - focus on welfare issue and aim to EXPOSE - question of power and an implication that there is agency and things that change - it involved human action (key concern) - Social geography shares a lot of concerns with other geographical (Cultural, economic and political geography) - Social geography is NOT just sociology - instead it places a particular emphasis on the ways in which society and people within societies are organised, regulated and controlled in spaces which they live - it recognises that social practices happen in different spaces and places - Unlike sociology - social geography is much more attentive to ideas of scale A changing discipline (See Del Casio, Ch 2, 2009 for overview) - Ecological approaches - Later C19th (physical) geographers use Darwin’s theories to explain society, critiques of the state - Anarchism: Peter Kropotkin, Élisée Reclus (cointed the term), and ‘social geography’ - The Chicago School: more than urban models – ethnography, description, social Darwinism - The Chicago School made the Burgess model -

Socio-economic approaches - Post WW2 - geographers applied economic theories to seek social scientific ‘credibility’ - 1970s - growing influence of Marxism - Critique of quantitative geography - Concern for social justice - Urban focus - housing segregation

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Social and Cultural approaches - Late 1980s - The ‘Cultural Turn’ - interest in representational over redistributive politics - Representing marginalised groups - women, ethnic, minorities, the dis/abled, children - Acknowledging the intersection with cultures - Social differences were seen to be embodied and emotion - Key text - The Geography of Women’s Fear (Valentine, 1989) - Addition of further plurality of “voices” into social geographies especially those previously excluded - The Cultural Turn in geographies also injected a new political impetus into social geographies - moved towards with changing relations and making them more equal

Theoretical basis for the course - Cultural approach to Social Geographies used through the course - 3 Key ideas for the course - Individuals are already part of society - Society can have multiple meanings - Denotes the ties people have with others - “Social relations” = the ties - Might include bodies that aren’t human (see Latour, 2005) - need to expand our understanding of the social to include non-human bodies, animals, objects and policies - Society is a political term - “there is no such thing as society” - the people should look after themselves - Thatcher; The Big Society Cameron. - Social relations are *always* power relations - Social relations are often about the ways in which people dominate, control, and resist the power of others. E.g. gender relations, class, race etc. - partly interest in ideas of identities (not in themselves ideological) but also about power, resources and performances - Society is not static, power is not static - it is something that changes and shifts - Social and power relations - Underpinned by material and social conditions, making them difficult to challenge without wider socio-spatial changes - Society and Space are connected (Pain et al., 2001) - Space reflects social activity - Segregated spaces reflect social inequalities - e.g. Slum housing, Gay villages

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Space constructs social activities - Space can play an active role in constructing inequalities - where you live can affect job opportunities, health, education etc. Space can be a means of resistance and  celebration - space can be used to challenge and resist social inequalities - Can be imagined space e.g. Grime music or physical space e.g. protest

Neoliberalism - A theory of political economic practices that proposed that human well-being can be best advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills - Promotion of an institution framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade - In this sense, neoliberalism is both political and economic - based directly within ideas of free market capital - The role of the state is to create and preserve such an institutional framework appropriate to such practices - State therefore has a specific set of jobs: - State has to guarantee military defence, police and legal structure and functions required to secure private property rights and proper functioning of markets - Markets (in areas such as land, water, education, health care, social security or environmental pollution) must be created by state action if necessary commonly known as privatisation - State interventions in markets (once created) must be kept to a bare minimum - Markets are meant to be left to set the price of goods - only the market that has the knowledge to do so - markets are given a lot of power (Harvey, 2005) -

Harvey’s definition of neoliberalism works at quite an abstract level - it sets out the ideals of what it should look like and how it should operate - further, it is worth noting that Harvey is NOT a proponent of neoliberalism but actually a critic of it

Neoliberalism is a global hegemony (but…) - “Actually existing neoliberalism” (Brenner and Theodore, 2002) - To capture the fact that the neoliberal project is path dependent - it paves out and plays out in different ways in different geographies - It does not look, feel, and shape society the same everywhere. Capturing this variation is important to understanding how it works. - Neoliberalism is relatively new - Emerges strongly in the 1980s

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Almost ubiquitous globally > a global hegemony - almost every developed nation adopts neoliberal ideas in some form - whether their ruling parties are left or right In this sense, neoliberalism can be seen as a form of global hegemony - it has a dominant and central position - anything outside is seem as other or wrong - This hegemonic position we see feed into policies that force neoliberalism on countries as a condition of aid or assistance to countries

Why neoliberalism? - Neoliberalism arrived following Keynesian economics which rule din the 50s/ 60s/ 70s Keynes advocated large public spending - large state ownership and a large welfare estate - evidence = NHS, council housing etc - created a prosperous society for two decades during 70s recession/ depression and economy stagnated - Thatcher then argued that the economy was being stifled by government intervention economy would be better served by more freedom - Neoliberalism has lead to a greater level of growth to some extent however has created greater income inequality What's wrong with neoliberalism? - Marxist critique - Take neoliberalism to mean roughly the same as advanced capitalism - increased concentration of wealth to the rich at the expense of the poor - Loosely speaking - it argues that neoliberalism seeks to concentrate the wealth of the world into increasingly fewer set of hands - making it unsustainable - The top 1% of pop now owns 50% of global economy - Neoliberalism may be stunting growth - Harvey’s definition of neoliberalism works at quite an abstract level - it sets out the ideals of what it should look like and how it should operate - further, it is worth noting that Harvey is NOT a proponent of neoliberalism but actually a critic of it - Also seen to produce a who host of social harms - socioeconomic inequality, authoritarianism, corrupt governments and the destruction of the environment - Reduction in size / power of the state means there are fewer checks and balances and high levels of uncertainty for marginalised groups - highlighted by austerity measures -

Globalisation critique - Neoliberalism (emphasis on openness) seen to increase rate and effects of globalisation - often neoliberalism / globalisation seen as the same thing (Harvey, 2005)

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Globalisation - generates further inequality through the introductions of a wider set of actors into the mix but also  erodes society through spreading social relations (Amin, 2002) - this generates a further friction with the democratic process of the nation and the power of TNCs. - TNCs (such as Amazon) - seemingly benefit from the system but never contribute to it through proper levels of taxes and cannot be held accountable by the democratic processes of the nation state itself Globalisation as a threat to democracy (Chomsky, 1998)

What are the alternatives to neoliberalism? - Revolution - It is a direct extension of anarchist principles which calls for a mass overhaul of political / economic systems in favour of alternatives (usually socialism / communism) - Retreat - A large number of different movements that aim to create spaces outside the neoliberal system - these space include communes / cooperatives, and other small scale governance projects - these don’t ascribe to free market/ globalisation principles - “Practicing ethical economic independence and liberating the self, including practice of work-life time balancing, surplus sharing, care for our encounters with human and non-human, commoning of property, investment in reparative action for environments and in infrastructure to support future generations” (Gibson, 2014; 286) - feminist thinking - Reformation - Probably has the most political capital - E,g, RE-Nationalisation of railways - Green New Deal - very similar - Brexit - one form of reform - desires for change - backlash to particular elements of the globalised world - There is a clear search for reform in the everyday if you look for them Thinking forward: neoliberalism, society and space - Course it's not about bringing down neoliberalism - Instead neoliberalism as the context for our discussion - Frames contemporary power relations and their uneven distribution (Massey, 1994) What do we mean by power anyways? Maxist ideas of power - Power is:

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- Finite - Limited - only be held by one person at a time - Oppressive - power is power OVER rather than power TO Class based analyses - Working class (no power) v Ruling class (All the power) - Capitalism relies on ruling class has all the power - People are socialised into the ideology of the ruling class as the right ideology = false consciousness - Extends to the values and morals of ruling class - accepted by society in order to maintain power - For Marx, revolution occurs when the disempowered seize power and change the conditions of their existence Marxist thought allows for the consideration of multiple arrangements of power (Nigam, 1996) - The state only appears to serve the working class being it is already seized by the ruling class - not really serves but rather perpetuating dominance

Bourdieu’s idea of power - French sociologist - Power is: - Socially and symbolically created - Continually re-legitimized through the interplay of agency (free will) and structure - Habitus: socialised norms and tendencies that determine behaviour and thinking - Habitus are the things you do largely without thinking about them, you just know - Extends to our cultural tastes - things we see as having value - Capital: extended beyond material assets / economic to social, cultural and symbolic forms of capital - Capital is something you possess, can accumulate and can use within social power relations Foucault’s idea of power - Power is: - Diffuse rather than concentrated - Embodied and enacted NOT possessed - Discursive rather than coercive - Constitutes agents rather than being deployed by them - Power is not something you have, it is something you do - your actions may contribute to the operation of power - Power is ubiquitous and appears in every social situation - “Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.” (History of Sexuality)

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Power is productive = power produces reality - power is inseparable from knowledge

What do we mean by power anyway? - Plurality of understanding - Hannah Arendt - Power is a product of action whose purpose is persuasion - only exists as potential - Weber - Power is the probability of an actor in a social relationship is able to carry out their will in the face of resistance - activated and is domination - Giddens: Power is exercised and created by people. No locus and not connect to norms/ values / class - Clegg: power is a circuit - Feminist theory - focus on how gender and power intersect...