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doi: 10.1068/d130259pmid: N/A
In this article I take issue with the view defended by Habermas and his followers that the critique of rationalism and universalism necessarily undermines the very basis of the modern democratic ideals. I show the important contribution that an anti-essentialist approach can bring to the understanding of the way democratic identities are constituted. I argue that it is only within a framework that relinquishes the epistemological tenets of the Enlightenment that it is possible to come to terms with the nature of pluralism and to reformulate the democratic project in a way that acknowledges the political in its dimension of power and antagonism.
doi: 10.1068/d130267pmid: N/A
Taking her present essay as my point of departure, I elaborate key aspects of Chantal Mouffe's theorization of radical and plural democracy. In particular, I stress the importance of rearticulating hegemony, reason, and time and space for a theory of politics and the political commensurate with radical democracy.
doi: 10.1068/d130275pmid: N/A
In the work of Chantal Mouffe, society is seen as structured by a hegemonic articulation, but one that is only temporarily fixed and always under subversion. Following Mouffe, in this paper I pursue the implications of theorizing ‘the economy’ as a hegemonic formation rather than as a fixed capitalist totality. What might it mean to understand ‘the economic’ as a provisional articulation of capitalist and noncapitalist activities and relations? How might it open up the possibility of anticapitalist and noncapitalist economic interventions? Encouraged by feminist attempts to produce a discourse of sexual difference that is not subsumed to a binary gender hierarchy, I envision a discourse of economic difference that could destabilize and problematize the presumption of capitalist hegemony.
doi: 10.1068/d130283pmid: N/A
In this paper I reflect upon the project of radical democracy as developed by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, and in particular on Mouffe's article “Post-Marxism, democracy and identity”. In the first part of the paper I consider some interesting parallels between the project of radical democracy and certain recent lines of thought within geography, and argue that the two areas of work could helpfully inform each other. In the second part of the paper I raise some general issues about radical democracy, including questions of identity, anti-essentialism and universalism.
doi: 10.1068/d130289pmid: N/A
Unlike research in the Anglophone West Indies, research in the French West Indies has only very recently developed the idea of the existence of a peasant social group in the plantation societies of Guadeloupe and Martinique. The fragility and instability of the collective identity in the French West Indies has served as a principal argument to support the view that the group is not a peasantry but a mere by-product of the plantation system. The idea of the absence of a real process of taking control of space or of a sort of intimate history with space occurs in some writings to explain this weakness of collective sense. Far from refuting the argument which firmly links the identity question to that of space, I shall reinforce it but in order to show that, on the contrary, there arc good grounds for affirming the existence, in the case of the peasant group in Martinique, of an original social experience in which space is strongly mobilised. In doing this, my intention is also to add weight to a theoretical point of view which shows the strength of the ties between space and identity, given that the peasant world in Martinique provides a paradigmatic example of the undeniable power of these ties.
doi: 10.1068/d130311pmid: N/A
Foucault developed theories on the exercise of power so that they might be applied to geographically and historically specific instances, In this paper I analyze the processes of power recently in operation on the black population of the Cabrini-Green housing development in Chicago. Previously excluded from the larger urban matrix, the residents have been subject to a variety of forces—Involving discipline, discursive containment, physical repression, and deterrence —as attempts have been made to ‘reclaim’ the area and regulate the sociospatial control of bodies. Issues of visibility, knowledge, and situation are paramount both in the processes of power involved in ‘rehabilitating’ Cabrini-Green and in the residents' resistance to such outside intervention.
Winchester, Hilary P M; Costello, Lauren N
doi: 10.1068/d130329pmid: N/A
The resurgence and visibility of homelessness since the 1980s have become significant social and political issues, widely debated in academic circles and in the popular press. The composition of the homeless population has changed markedly in this period, and now includes more women and children, and more of the deinstitutionalised mentally ill. The lives of street kids in the city of Newcastle, Australia show patterns of structured behaviour and territorial and social organisation. They have a distinctive group identity and moral order. Their subculture is complex with strains of nonpatriarchal and patriarchal relations combined with little tolerance of forms of difference. The moral code of the youth subculture may be a form of resistance to their histories of abuse but is also conservative in reproducing aspects of the culture that they resist. The social networks generated on the street provide a self-maintaining force which contributes to a culture of chronic homelessness.
doi: 10.1068/d130349pmid: N/A
Geographers have traditionally discussed adolescence as an experience of turmoil and anxiety, which is often class and gender-specific. Almost invariably, that analysis has focused on the manifestations and interactions of rebellion, violent conflict, and social disadvantage. In this paper, however, elements of stability and less dramatic activity, as well as themes of change and anxiety within adolescence, are emphasised. The experience of dilemma within adolescence is shown to accommodate a plurality of influences and expressions beyond the relatively narrow experiences of violence and aggression. In order to examine these nuances of adolescent dilemmas, I will pursue a critical discourse analysis of data drawn from an extended programme of indigenous ethnography. The central theme of this analysis will consider the ways in which dilemmas within individual religious experience can inform, and remain informed by, the landscape and place interpretations of ten adolescents living in a Suffolk Parish. These interpretations include references to Christian ecumenical festivals. Consequently, this paper may be of interest to social and cultural geographers, particularly those interested in religio-geographical problems, as well as religious leaders and their lay assistants who arc involved in the instigation and organisation of festivals and similar religious events attended by adolescent people.
doi: 10.1068/d130365pmid: N/A
In this essay the work of Homi Bhabha is discussed. The complexity of Bhabha's writing might be seen as symptomatic of the critically ineffectual obsession with textuality that many geographers have recently criticised. However, I argue that there are a number of reasons for Bhabha's convoluted textual style. I suggest that he is performing a subject position symptomatic of the contradictions of post/colonial discourse, contradictions he is also at the same time analysing. This performance has implications for geographers' current discussions of situated knowledge and self-reflection. It also has implications for the thcorisation of space, because Bhabha argues that the politics of subjectivity arc also the politics of spatiality. The essay ends with a discussion of the relation between Bhabha's politics of subjectivity and the politics of material corporeality.
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