Progress in Political Geography (Routledge Revivals)

Michael Pacione

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134597680
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Demografia

Since the 1970s, the field of political geography has undergone a significant transformation, where new methodologies have been implemented to investigate the exercise of the power of the state within the urban environment. First published in 1985, the essays in this collection addressed the growing need to assess the academic revisions that had been taking place and provide a reference point for future developments in the discipline. Still of great relevance, the essays consider the most prominent themes in areas of key importance to political geography, including theory and methodology, minority groups, local government and the geography of elections. This volume will be of significant value for students of political geography, urban demography and town planning.

1 THEORY AND METHODOLOGY IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY

J. C. Archer and F. M. Shelley

Introduction

Political geography had been defined as ‘the science of political areas’ (Hartshorne, 1935a, p. 804), ‘the study of geographical area and political process’ (Ackerman, et al., 1965, p. 32), ‘the spatial analysis of political phenomena’ (Kasperson and Minghi, 1969, p. xi), a set of ‘locational approaches to power and conflict’ (Cox, Reynolds and Rokkan, 1974), and simply ‘political studies from spatial perspectives’ (Burnett and Taylor, 1981). Each of these definitions has served as a guide to research undertaken under the general heading of political geography. Yet a recent review likens political geography to a metaphorical Los Angeles: ‘all sprawling neighbourhoods and no centre’ (Short, 1983, p. 122). Like neighbourhoods in a changing and growing metropolis, theories and methodologies in political geography have changed through the years, with some once fashionable areas becoming run down as new areas develop and attain prominence. But theoretical and methodological changes rarely occur without friction, for methodologies, like neighbourhoods, involve a marking out of territory and a defence of existing property rights, such as access to publication and academic prestige.

Johnston (1983, p. 1) has noted that, ‘A discipline is brought into existence because those propagating it are able to show potential sponsors that its topical content is worthy of study and that its means of study are valid.’ Such demonstration is particularly difficult in the case of political geography and its diverse subcentres. Wright (1944, p. 190) perceived that ‘Political geography is perhaps the most “human” phase of geography, since it deals so largely with the strengths, weaknesses and ambitions of men.’ Because of this, a wholly neutral, wholly value-free approach is unattainable. While many political geographers would like to appear objective and ‘scientific’, they cannot escape the denotation of the adjective ‘political’: ‘of or pertaining to the state or its government’ (Stern, 1979, p. 1113). Attempts to develop theory in political geography must involve ideological implications, whether these are explicit or not.

Contempory political geography is avowedly pluralistic, with unprecedented cross-fertilisation of scholarly ideas within the political geography community and between political geographers and other students of political processes in political science, economics, sociology and law. The current pluralism of political geography stands in rather sharp contrast with the isolationism of the discipline during much of its intellectual history, in which periods of theoretical advance alternated with periods of explicit retreat from theoretical innovation. Yet in order to gain appreciation for contemporary theoretical and methodological developments in political geography, to review recent research advancing these developments, and to consider possible coming trends in the field, it is important to set the stage from a long-run perspective. This is the intent of the first part of this essay, in which theoretical developments in political geography were often undertaken via direct or indirect analogy with models from the life or physical sciences. In contrast, contemporary theoretical and methodological advances — to which Short (1983) alluded in describing the discipline as in a state of intellectual gentrification — have more often reflected models developed in the social sciences, and notably in economics. The pluralism which now characterises political geography represents a form of maturity which was earlier absent, though this pluralism could be misinterpreted as an eclectic admixture of mutual inconsistencies representing opposed ideological vantage points.

Early Theoretical Foundations of Political Geography

It is perhaps rare that the genesis of a subject of study can be traced to a single seminal work, but this is often regarded as true of political geography (Fawcett, 1957, p. 418; Fisher, 1968, p. 1). In English language discussions of the matter, this view appears traceable to Hartshorne’s (1953a, p. 789) survey, in which he wrote that ‘the foundations were laid by Friedrich Ratzel, whose Politische Geographie, published in 1897, is universally recognised as the first systematic treatment of the subject.’ But Hartshorne was vague about the nature of the foundations laid down by Ratzel, who in turn was scarcely the first to use the phrase, ‘political geography’.

Political geographic description had long been undertaken as an extension of historical or commercial geography. Early in the nineteenth century in Germany, for example, a research tradition known as ‘political arithmetic’ had arisen. With strong ties to regional geography, political arithmetic endeavoured to assemble and systematise information regarding countries throughout the world (Lazarsfeld, 1961). The approach was reminiscent of what is now labelled the ‘power analysis’ school of political geography with its links to military geography (Cohen, 1973, p. 7). Political arithmeticians organised information in large systematic arrays which included both numerical and verbal data; in concept, these data arrays were analogous to what Berry (1964) much more recently termed ‘geographic matrices’.

Judging by Mackinder’s remarks to the Royal Geographical Society in 1887, the phrase ‘political geography’ was common currency in England well before the turn of the century. Its intellectual role was seen as one of imparting to ‘future statesmen a full grasp of geographical conditions’ (Mackinder, 1962, p. 213). But Mackinder wa§ quite critical of the subject as he surveyed it (Mackinder, 1962, p. 214):

At the present moment we are suffering under the effects of an irrational political geography, one, that is, whose main function is not to trace causal relations, and which must therefore remain a body of isolated data to be committed to memory. Such a geography can never be a discipline.

The dilemma which faced political geography during the late nineteenth century was its wealth of data contrasting with its poverty of theory. Perhaps this is why Hartshorne later pointed to Ratzel for the first systematic treatment of the subject. But what form did his theories take — and why have they failed to retain their earlier prominence?

Like other social scientists and social philosophers of the late nineteenth century, Ratzel was inspired by the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859. Darwin’s theory of natural selection exerted an enormous impact upon biological sciences as a result of its potential for reconciling what had until then seemed disparate and contradictory facts. Although the theory rested upon careful inductive observation of nature, it is important to recall that it also rested upon analogy with human society. In Darwin’s (1970, p. 196) own words, the theory of natural selection ‘is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms’. The impetus to natural selection was viewed as reproductive potential exceeding resources, creating competition for sustenance as populations expanded. From Adam Smith Darwin drew additional insight into the form of natural selection: a species was regarded as a natural counterpart to a specialised occupation, with such specialisation promoting efficient use of resources. Darwin’s major contribution was thus to reveal nature as a competitive, interdependent community regulated by principles of political economy.

The sweeping success of Darwin’s theory led others to adopt his methods, directly or by analogy, to account for seemingly contradictory facts on the basis of unifying principles. Ratzel, himself schooled in zoology and geology, looked to the biological sciences for inspiration in the study of human society. He proposed what was perhaps the first political-geographic model, in which the state is regarded as 4 an organic entity increasingly attached to the land on which it lives‘ (Kasperson and Minghi, 1969, p. 8). Ratzel’s views regarding the concept of ‘laws’ and the character of states were complex, and he cautioned against simple, direct ‘analogy between an aggregate of men and the structure of an organic creature’ (Kasperson and Minghi, 1969, p.8). A new translation of his work on ‘The Laws of the Spatial Growth of States’ (Ratzel, 1969, pp. 17–18) reads in part:

Inventories of states which depict the territory of the state as a stable, fully fixed object come to this dogmatic and sterile conception primarily through disregard of such ruptures. Consideration of them can only strengthen the single correct conclusion: that in the state we are dealing with an organic nature. … Some number of people are joined to the area of the state. These live on its soil, draw their sustenance from it, and are otherwise attached to it by spiritual relationships. Together with this piece of earth they form the state.

While sceptical of viewing the state as an individual organic creature, Ratzel none the less asserted its organic character, a distinction which was perhaps too subtle for some of his critics, and doubtless for some of his later followers as well. One of Ratzel’s goals was to provide a framework within which to integrate seemingly disparate geographical facts and, given the intellectual tenor of the times, the organic theory of the state ‘provided a simple and powerful model in analytical political geography’ (Stoddart, 1966, p. 694). In some respects, this model presaged later systems-theory-based frameworks of political analysis.

The Retreat from Theory

It has been said that ‘American academic geography reached its pinnacle of respect and achievement under the leadership of William Morris Davis’, who, like Ratzel, employed Darwinian thinking to derive a theoretical framework (Herbst, 1961, p. 540). At this time, early in the twentieth century, a unity of purpose linked physical and human geography, as did, in substantial measure, a unity of theory which placed nature in a paramount position with respect to human endeavours. Sorokin’s (1928) well-documented survey of sociological theory, for example, devoted considerable space — 93 pages — to the ‘geographical school’. Sorokin (1928, p. 193) concluded that:

Any analysis of social phenomena, which does not take into consideration geographical factors, is incomplete. We are grateful to the school for these valuable contributions. This, however, does not oblige us to accept its fallacious theories, its fictitious correlations, or finally, its overestimation of the role of geographical environment. We must separate the wheat from the chaff.

One may suspect that the harsh criticism levelled at the ‘geographical school’ by Sorokin was motivated partly by a desire to define the search for correlations between social and natural phenomena as within the domain of sociology rather than that of geography (Sorokin, 1928, p. 760). Such an interpretation can be reinforced by noting that Park and Burgess (1970, p. 123) claimed that the study of ‘Land as a basis for social contacts’ was the foundation of the human ecology subdivision of sociological research. But, whereas human ecologists continued to seek correlations between spatial relations and social relations, human geographers, rather than trying to separate the ‘wheat from the chaff’, instead retreated from search for causation into chorography. Among other consequences, this meant that ‘Both natural and human geography were now bereft of a causal explanatory principle that could give independence and unity to geography as a science in its own right’ (Herbst, 1961, p. 542). Most ‘American geographers went back to Kant, Ritter, and Hettner, and rediscovered geography as ‘the science of areal differentiation of the earth’s surface’ (Herbst, 1961, p. 542).

If human geography in general was edged into retreat, political geography was plunged into chaos. Hartshorne’s (1953a; 1935b) survey avoided mention of Darwin. Ratzel received but brief and enigmatic mention in the second instalment, and neither instalment sharply outlined Ratzel’s theoretical stance or drew attention to the search for a scientific explanation of causation. Indeed, Hartshorne (1935a, pp. 790–1) distanced political geography from the possibility of such ‘misinterpretation’ when he wrote that:

many geographers have changed their concept of ‘historical geography’ … and have classified studies of geographic influences in history as ‘geographic history,’ i.e rather a part of the field of history than of geography. Nevertheless, it was the work of the geographers that brought this subject to the attention of historians like Turner and Vogel, and geographers trust to see other historians, adequately trained in geography, make use of geographical methods and concepts in their historical studies.

Later in the same article, he averred, though with some qualifications, that ‘the geographer feels justified in turning over the question of Geopolitik to the students of political science’ (Hartshorne, 193...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Dedication
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Theory and Methodology in Political Geography J. C. Archer and F. M. Shelley
• 2. Geopolitics S. D. Brunn and K. A. Mingst
• 3. Conflict Between States J. N. H. Douglas
• 4. Minority Groups in the Modern State C. H. Williams
• 5. Local Government and the State R.J. Johnston
• 6. Urban Political Processes and Resource Allocation A. Burnett
• 7. Local Democracy in the City R. Paddison
• 8. The Geography of Elections P.J. Taylor
• Notes on Contributors
• Index