Strategic Positivism∗

∗I am grateful to Mei-Po Kwan, Tim Schwanen, Michael Brown, and anonymous referees for valuable criticism and advice on previous versions of this article. Many other friends and colleagues have generously offered comments and questions that have shaped my thoughts on these matters: Thanks to Jatinder Dhillon, Bob Lake, Brian and Rose Klinkenberg, Steve Holloway, Dan Hammel, Kathe Newman, Markus Moos, Trevor Barnes, Michael Dear, Jennifer Wolch, Paul Plummer, Byron Miller, Chris Fowler, Susan Hanson, Michael Medler, Andrew Bodman, Scott Miles, Sally Hermansen, Mark Pendras, and Derek Gregory. The usual disclaimer that the usual disclaimer applies, applies.

Abstract

Since the early 1970s, critical theorists in geography and other social sciences have worked to build what Steinmetz (2005) calls a “pluralistic postpositivist counterworld.” Postpositivist intellectual currents emerged in the shadow of, and in opposition to, mainstream science at a time when positivist epistemology, quantitative methodology, and conservative political ideology seemed always to go hand in hand. This neat alignment was contingent and contextual, but every postpositivist movement committed to progressive or radical politics has portrayed the nexus as essential and immutable. Over time this caricature has been reinforced and reproduced, as strident postpositivists and defensive spatial scientists pursue ever more sophisticated, challenging specializations that make it harder to bridge the binaries of our field. In this article, I suggest that the presumed linkages between epistemology, methodology, and politics were never fundamental or immutable—and that recent years have brought significant realignments. Right-wing political operatives have coopted many of the epistemologies and methods traditionally associated with the postpositivist academic left. A new generation of progressive, critical geographers is doing first-rate work—like that appearing in this Focus Section—that is revitalizing the scientific rigor, policy relevance, and political power of the left. I analyze how this movement of strategic positivism is an integral (but single) element of a pluralist geography that mobilizes trust and deference to synthesize individual specialization and collective goals to build emancipatory geographies.

Desde principios de los 1970, teóricos críticos de la geografía y de otras ciencias sociales han trabajado para construir lo que Steinmetz (2005) denomina un “ant-mundo pluralista pospositivista.” Las corrientes intelectuales pospositivistas aparecieron a la sombra de la línea vertebral de la ciencia, y en contra de ésta, cuando la epistemología positivista, la metodología cuantitativa y la ideología política conservadora parecían ir de la mano en todo momento. Este claro alineamiento era contingente y contextual, pero cualquier movimiento pospositivista comprometido con política progresista o radical denunciaría aquel vínculo como esencial e inmutable. A medida que el tiempo pasaba, esa caricatura ha sido reforzada y reproducida, por la estridencia con la que pospositivistas y científicos espaciales a la defensiva promovían especializaciones desafiantes cada vez más sofisticadas, que hacen mucho más difícil zanjar los binarios de nuestro campo. En este escrito, sugiero que los supuestos lazos de la epistemología con la metodología y la política nunca fueron fundamentales o inmutables—y que los años recientes han traído realineamientos significativos. Operativos políticos de la derecha han retomado muchas de las epistemologías y métodos tradicionalmente asociados con la izquierda académica pospositivista. Y una nueva generación de geógrafos críticos progresistas adelanta trabajo de primera clase—como el que aparece en esta Sección Focal—que está revitalizando el rigor científico, la relevancia de sus políticas y el poder político de la izquierda. Analizo cómo este movimiento de positivismo estratégico es elemento integral (pero individual) de una geografía pluralista, que moviliza confianza y deferencia hacia la síntesis de la especialización individual y las metas colectivas, a partir de la cual edificar geografías emancipadoras.

Key Words:

• history of geography
• methodology
• policy
• positivism
• postpositivism

关键词:

• 历史
• 地理
• 方法
• 政策
• 实证
• 后实证主义

Palabras clave:

• historia de la geografía
• metodología
• política
• positivismo
• pospositivismo

ELVIN WYLY is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, and Chair of the Urban Studies Program, at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include housing finance, urban inequalities of race, ethnicity, gender, and class, gentrification and neighborhood change, and the politics of method.

Notes

∗I am grateful to Mei-Po Kwan, Tim Schwanen, Michael Brown, and anonymous referees for valuable criticism and advice on previous versions of this article. Many other friends and colleagues have generously offered comments and questions that have shaped my thoughts on these matters: Thanks to Jatinder Dhillon, Bob Lake, Brian and Rose Klinkenberg, Steve Holloway, Dan Hammel, Kathe Newman, Markus Moos, Trevor Barnes, Michael Dear, Jennifer Wolch, Paul Plummer, Byron Miller, Chris Fowler, Susan Hanson, Michael Medler, Andrew Bodman, Scott Miles, Sally Hermansen, Mark Pendras, and Derek Gregory. The usual disclaimer that the usual disclaimer applies, applies.

¹Congress subsequently passed emergency legislation including some provisions directing bankruptcy administrators to exercise “appropriate restraint” and discretion for disaster victims; yet the overwhelming emphasis of the emergency legislation was to provide tax relief only for property owners (Kalinka 2006).

²Warren was one of five members named to an oversight panel to monitor the U.S. government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in October 2008; she was elected chair at the panel's first meeting.

³Some of the more conservative old-school quantitative revolutionaries have not helped matters by reinscribing the old dichotomies and denigrating contemporary social–theoretical work. I have tried to engage these geographers elsewhere (Wyly 2004). In this article I hope to reach a different audience—those who are predisposed against the analytical traditions associated with the quantitative revolution.

⁴I am grateful to one of the anonymous referees for this way of describing the issue.

⁵The probability p _A of observing mathematical equations, statistical results, or simple numeric tabulations in a radical geographical journal like Antipode might well be defined as p _A = lim_{Δ R→∞} = 0, where Δ R is the accepted contribution to radical theoretical knowledge production.

⁶We need to prepare for the time when the campaign looks beyond biology and sets its sights on astronomy, physics, geology, archaeology, meteorology, and geomorphology.

⁷See the fifty pages of obsessive analysis of subjectivity, inference, intentionality, and human agency (of torturers) in Bybee (2002).

⁸As Hyndman (2007) reminds us, counting does not always succeed: “In both Iraq and Afghanistan our deaths appear to matter much more than their deaths” (43). But the counterfactual remains crucial: Where would we be if there had been no challenge at all, no counting at all, in opposition to Tommy Franks's callous one-liner, “You know we don't do body counts”? (quoted in Filkins and Dao 2002, A1).

⁹This approach is not without its risk, and Spivak warns against the careless use of the concept: “[M]y notion just simply became the union ticket for essentialism. As to what is meant by strategy, no one wondered about that” (Danius, Jonsson, and Spivak 1993, 35).

¹⁰It should be clear that this statement is not directed solely to positivist spatial scientists. Positivism has no monopoly on truth, but it also has no monopoly on arrogance.

¹¹Consider, for example, the Annals retrospective on Tobler's (1970) first law of geography. Not surprisingly, when the commentaries focused on the old social physics connotations of law, the discussion became yet another struggle over foundationalism, universality, causality, and epistemology. Barnes (2004) offered a commentary intended “to discard the very talk of laws altogether,” in favor of a science-studies analysis of the contingent social, institutional, and geographical circumstances in which Tobler developed his ideas. Tobler's (2004, 307) reply includes the observation that “Barnes seems to feel that the context of the discovery of a law somehow affects its validity.”