A geography for the common good

ABSTRACT

The notion of the common good underlies much policy making in geography. There are two reasons for evaluating geography’s impact on the common good for the university curriculum. First, by working within the various theoretical paradigms that have influenced policy, students will learn to argue from different perspectives such as social democracy or neo-liberalism. Second, asking them to assess the effectiveness of policies in meeting the common good, produces employable graduates with skills in critical thinking and problem solving. This is especially true because the concept is often not fully developed and varies with each perspective. Initially students undertake a case study of an area that allows them to follow the logic of intervention during all its historical twists and turns. A further stage sees students arguing not just within but between different theoretical frameworks, comparing the various approaches in order to discover the most appropriate one for understanding the processes in the locality and for pursuing the common good. In the final stage students investigate the politics of knowledge, again using data from the same locality, looking at how the knowledge used in geographic policy making becomes an agent of socio-economic change through being absorbed by society’s dominant paradigm.

KEYWORDS:

• Common good
• paradigm
• reflexivity
• neo-liberalism
• East London
• social democracy

Introduction

It is difficult to disagree with the proposition that geographers and social scientists have a moral duty to work within the Enlightenment tradition for the common good of humankind (Burawoy, 2004; Harvey, 1974; Martin, 2001), but what that means depends upon the intellectual framework used to identify the problems that face society and the extent of the changes required to master them. Each theoretical position – whether social democracy, the third way, Marxism, conservatism or neo-liberalism – uses its own interpretations of social reality to argue that its particular approach is the only route towards the common good. Insofar the common good is synonymous with the good of society as a whole, then it is the justification for much human activity; it signifies the universality that is the basis of Western society as opposed to the partiality of special interests. Yet what it is and how that is to be attained varies so drastically that contemporary theorists rarely attribute any content to the concept (Dupre, 1993).

Nonetheless the argument in this paper is that a critical evaluation of geography’s contribution to the common good provides a good focus for course development. On the assumption of the effectiveness of learning by doing, it is argued that one can use a series of area-based case studies both to provide key insights into geography and to provide students with key skills. These exercises allow students to examine geography’s impacts over the historical record, to explain successes and failures and to identify the contributions of ideas and their implementation by politics. They aim to encourage students to use different theoretical paradigms for evaluating policy issues and their outcomes, in order to find the most relevant explanations and solutions for the traditional range of urban problems such as poverty, housing, tourism, the environment and democracy. Taking a broad social science approach, students may expand the criteria that can be used to assess impacts; this encourages students to be reflexive, making them conscious of how one’s choice of paradigm generates different interpretations of socio-spatial reality. Why for instance, are the impacts of policy seen to be so different according to the assumptions that one makes about society?

The common good is concerned with notions of social progress, of collectively achieving outcomes for everyone that cannot be achieved by the individual alone. It implicitly aims to maximise societal wealth and to optimise its distribution. Geography promotes the common good through the activities of practitioners in the service of the government, not least through the organisation of land use and through the impact of the concepts that structure day-to-day discourse.

The suggestions here are an attempt to formalise the way that I tried to introduce critical thinking in town planning and geography programmes, by encouraging students to examine policy within and outside of the paradigm in which they were formulated (Eisenschitz, 2000). One common issue is the tension between practitioners forced to work within the set of ideas dominant at the time, and the theorists with freedom to choose the paradigm within which they interpret what is going on. Neither side can be investigated without the other, because while practitioners and policy are moulded by these dominant beliefs, to fully understand spatial changes requires a vantage point that lies outside of that used by policy makers. By doing this one can identify the congruence between theory and practice. One must not forget that there is nothing as practical as theory and that effective change requires practice informed by relevant theory. To fully understand changes in an area we ensured that policy was interpreted within more than one paradigm, if only to ensure that if students were to work in policy making, they could step back and mitigate the inevitable frustrations that go with the job.

Case studies of the impact of geographical strategies in particular localities over time allow students to investigate how closely outcomes are aligned to various interpretations of the common good. How did geography represent spatial issues and interpret their causes, why did the state intervene with different responses to similar problems? By evaluating physical policies students learn to handle and interpret data, and to assess problem definition and outcomes according to different perspectives. Because social democracy, local socialism, the third way and neo-liberalism leave physical traces everywhere, students learn to decode the ideas that inspired them and to evaluate the contribution of geographical thought and practice to social change under different theoretical and political regimes.

Students may also approach these questions through different paradigms, in order to investigate which explanations, which types of knowledge and which strategies are most suitable for pursuing the various versions of the common good. In addition, since there is at any one time a dominant theoretical and political paradigm, one can give students the opportunity to investigate its impact on theorists and practitioners, particularly the way the latter are usually compelled to interpret geographical ideas through the prism of its politics.

Finally, this approach provides students with a reflexivity and an ability to argue and to make judgements, which is essential given the evaporation of the certainties of social democracy and the tendency of market-based strategies to damage markets and society. According to Polanyi (Fraser, 2012) the full commodification of land, labour and money generates crises everywhere, and these will require innovative, critical and holistic responses across, rather than within, disciplinary boundaries. If, as is possibly the current situation, a state that is too closely aligned with neo-liberal politics cannot adequately support the system of capital accumulation, then graduates able to distance themselves from the conventional wisdom will have added value in the labour market.

The common good

Because the common good is often discussed at a high level of abstraction, it is difficult to operationalise. To short-circuit philosophical debate, it is suggested that a definition should incorporate access to, and the distribution of, subsistence goods as part of people’s quality of life, although this should be at the tutor’s discretion. Subsistence may include housing, education, health, water, transport and clean air, and may embrace more intangible criteria around social, economic and political rights, such as community safety, political and economic democracy, social inclusion, civil rights, the environment and equality of opportunity or outcomes. Each paradigm differs in the criteria used to define the common good.

For neo-liberalism the common good is equated with individual freedom which allows people-as-consumers to retain as much of their earnings as possible, since individual flourishing is equated with spending in de-regulated markets. Social democracy by contrast equates the common good with the prioritisation of society over the economy, which requires greater levels of democracy as a means of civilising markets for people-as-citizens. More socialist politics are distinguished by the extent of these democratic arrangements. The key principles of each phase of politics will display physical patterns that translate its abstract aims into outcomes consistent with its view of the common good.

There are three levels of case study. The first (Area-based case stuidies) involves analysis of the geographical processes and policies in a particular locality over time, looking at their impacts on the common good. For each era students may discover how geography conceptualises it, the key assumptions and criteria that colour the definition and resolution of the problems and the claims and outcomes of policy. Who has benefitted and who has not? Who pays and who profits? Tutors could choose either to take the succession of policies in one area and chart the changing nature of the common good as it was defined during each period, or they could investigate the claims, justifications and outcomes of one policy, such as council housing, urban regeneration or town planning, to show how a national strategy aimed at the common good, played out in that locality. The key aspect of this level is to look at the issues as they were presented at the time, although one must also make students aware of the assumptions and the politics of each approach.

The second level (Paradigmatic argument) takes this further by asking students to stand outside each paradigm. How are we to assess these different eras given that this depends upon the observer’s location? If they have examined the post-war social democratic impacts within the assumptions of the time, we now ask them to vary their theoretical framework, seeing that each perspective differs in every respect. What is a solution to one may be a problem to another, while the criteria for defining the common good that are adopted by one is anathema to another. Taking the data assembled in level one, students can compare how different paradigms interpret the way that social democracy or neo-liberalism conceptualised and managed the issues in the area. In that way it is not impossible that students start to judge the potential and limitations of each approach to the common good within the study area.

The third level (Exploring the poiitics of knowedge) introduces knowledge as an active element of the social and political formation, asking students to identify the dominant paradigm at any particular time, how it conceptualises social and spatial processes and to analyse the extent and scope of its power. How does that paradigm work and how does it influence the way that geographers understand society? How is the mainstream discourse interpreted in each paradigm, how does it justify itself and how does it interpret past failures, and present and prevent, alternatives?

These three aspects may be taught in numerous ways and at different scales, even if one starts with a single module. Each case study requires parallel sessions on the different political positions and how they conceptualise state, space, problems, the individual and society.

Area-based case studies

To meet these aims we need an area that has experienced multiple types of interventions and has a large literature. These are often localities with histories of strong political conflict such as Glasgow or Liverpool, since they often have the most intractable social problems. East London is one of the most studied areas of social policy, the birthplace of council housing, the Labour Party, the general union, dark tourism, and poverty studies. It has always been treated as a potential threat to the political order, with policies acting demonstrations of how people’s lives can be transformed.

The East End’s physical face shows the impact of the Victorian language of self-help, charity and environmental determinism, the post-war belief in citizenship, social rights and the public regulation of land and housing, as well as notions of market rights, competitiveness, consumerism and deregulation. Interlaced with this sequence were two interludes of municipal socialism. Each viewpoint implies a political and theoretical model for social change for the common good, and each with different physical implications. Among the myriad strategies we can see Dickens’ Mrs Jellyby who is lampooned for advocating colonies in Africa for the British poor, something that the Salvation Army considered by training the London poor in agricultural labour at Hadleigh in Essex. Similarly, we see self-help whereby East Londoners built their own dwellings in Essex during the 1930s, before being outlawed by post-war planning legislation.

Social democracy in East London rested on a cross-party consensus around a strong state, nationalisation as a means of enhancing profitability, the organised reproduction of labour around the social wage and a social housing policy that excluded women, immigrants, single mothers, the disabled and the mentally ill. This was a firmly authoritarian approach, supplemented by a conservative working class, local politics. The common good was constructed around notions of citizenship giving entitlement to social rights and collectively supplied goods, such as jobs, education, social housing and health. Associated physical policies included physical decentralisation, regional policy, the New Towns, the green belt and socially mixed comprehensive redevelopment.

That period contrasts with neo-liberalism as capital broke free from the power of unions and government, reversing the gains of reformist social democratic policy and striking a new balance between labour and capital as epitomised by the regeneration of Docklands, with the forced transfer of public land to the private sector, its silencing of local democracy and the loss of local authority powers. The newly created spaces helped to construct neo-liberal policies: the financial district of Canary Wharf that escaped the City of London’s planning regulations and provided infrastructure for economic globalisation, the battle of Wapping that destroyed the print unions’ restrictive practices and the reduced space standards of the mass-produced private housing. Neo-liberalism’s version of the common good sees long-term gains for all by reversing the fall in profits, nurturing a precariat and generalising insecurity.

Local socialism’s first appearance was as Gas and Water Socialism in the 1890s, emerging in such Boroughs as West Ham, and subsequently rehabilitated by the metropolitan boroughs between 1981 and1986 as part of a programme

o enhance local democracy by replacing class conflict with a partnership between workers, residents, state and capital. Like neo-liberalism it aimed at greater profitability, but rather than letting it trickle down, the common good lay in sharing it with workers and residents. These policies have generated masses of data that students may interpret with different theoretical frameworks so as to be in a position to make judgements about geography.

With all these models of development available there is always ample scope for students to assess each one, to compare it with others and to immerse themselves in a particular way of thinking, and in that way to reach an initial view of the common good. If the area is local to the university, students should visit; they always enjoyed exploring the visibility of the politics in buildings and urban structure and decoding the connection between politics and policies. One issue that does, however, require more attention is how to help students select and use the data that is increasingly available to support their arguments.

Paradigmatic argument

By this time students will understand why attitudes to an area and its problems change. They can now situate the paradigm within which policy was developed, and assess those more suitable for developing the common good. Most students will assess the social democratic and neo-liberal periods, the more adventurous taking the local socialist approach and opening a Marxist analysis. This is not straightforward because each perspective interprets everything, differently, so that a strong case for social reform, for instance, presented in one paradigm, appears weak in another. Neo-liberalism can be exploitation or freedom; social democracy can be a means of class control or of civilising capitalism; democracy may be a form of empowerment for a better life, or a brake on economic development; community either expresses our collective nature or detracts from individual betterment. Not only do facts differ between paradigms but so do the criteria that are regarded as constituting the common good. By widening these criteria – for instance, by asking students to argue that tourism in London marks a retrograde step for the common good – students can be encouraged to think within different perspectives and develop convincing arguments to defend them.

Students have to consider whether neo-liberalism’s assertions of the positive impact of regeneration have been validated, particularly if they use the Docklands experience to broaden the criteria with which to consider the common good. How important, for example, is the private sector’s land grab that was facilitated by the state or the erasure of the area’s socialist politics and common historical memory? What about social mobility, ontological security or the density of community interaction, all of which enrich the concept? By adding new criteria for assessing the common good that were not previously associated with the term, students may adopt different paradigms for interpreting any of the issues such as the surplus population, democracy, the precariat, or de-industrialisation, to be found in the locality.

Exploring the politics of knowledge

These case studies encourage students to think of geographical knowledge as a part of social and political change – there is always a dominant paradigm that shapes new ideas, translates them into policy and sets the tone for much theory. It often rests on what appears to be an apolitical consensus with a range of unstated assumptions. By following Rex’s (1974) belief that teaching should encourage an intellectual nihilism, students would find themselves equipped to expose the ideological myths and hidden assumptions that create that symbiosis between knowledge and power. Once they notice how this dominant paradigm interprets space and society, we can encourage them to investigate how power relations are embedded in knowledge and space. If cities are class relations set in stone then they can see the paucity of choices open to practitioners and how they embed the assumptions of the dominant ideology into policy.

Students can also identify the universalist claims of each dominant ideology, and ask how they are justified, how they obliterate alternatives through their interpretation of problems and solutions, how they naturalise their approach and how this is all reflected in space. Students may now be able to consider alternative interpretations, assumptions, explanatory processes, concepts, issues and strategies to identify under what conditions the problems can be solved. One could, for instance, set up a project around London’s perpetual but ever-changing housing crisis, addressing the key explanations developed over the last century, and showing the connections between theory, concepts, solutions and the dominant mindsets of the day.

These exercises depend on complementary social science teaching and tend to polarise students. They can make students aware of their own intellectual position, which is a condition for being able to critically assess concepts, theories, strategies and policies, and to argue within and between intellectual paradigms. Once they “get it” students see what possibilities are opened to them and often find it exciting; this is particularly relevant for employability at a time when the tensions around neo-liberalism have obvious global implications.

Conclusion

Each paradigm often displays a seamless passage between its theory and practice. Students generally identify how most policies successfully operationalise theory in order to enhance their particular version of the common good, and in that way justify the paradigm. Some approaches like neo-liberalism, have a narrow disciplinary perspective that is patently ideological and are unable to find convincing evidence for their claims. Social democracy can bemore convincing in its benefits, but is often unable to show whether its success would have happened in any case; nor canit explain its ultimate failure. Both the social economy and local socialism can have convincing links between theory and policy to justify strong outcomes for the common good, yet because of political hostility there is insufficient data to review their impacts.

By letting students expand the criteria with which strategies may be evaluated, a few argued that the narrow practitioner approach, while maintaining disciplinary boundaries, is not necessarily successful in advancing the common good. The more we expanded the criteria for evaluating it, the more students found that the paradigms in common use rarely improved the common good permanently. Indeed, it was sometimes found that many dominant ideologies prevented practitioners from taking a holistic viewpoint; a fragmented approach sees problems as separate, but insolvable because they are symptoms of more fundamental issues. Fragmentation keeps problems intractable but it does prevent their politicisation. Tensions between practitioner and theorists, it is arguable, are a result of conflict between fragmentation and holism. This is what Alvesson et al. (2017) identify when they spell out the results of a fragmented social science that rarely sees the big picture and leaves a “vacuum of meaning”. It was fascinating to see some students reach a similar conclusion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).