29 RADICALISM

Mr. Joydeep Saha

   

I- Introduction

In the Leftist ideological group, there were two sections – Left-liberal and Left-radical. Both the sections were concerned with inequalities, deprivation etc, i.e. problems pertaining to rich-poor divide. They were against capitalism. They both criticized Positivists because Positivism could not answer the questions of deprivation, dislocation, crime, problems of female issues, class differences etc.

Left-liberals were those people who want minor adjustment in society for the benefits of have-nots. But Left-radicals wanted to change the entire social order.

II-Context

Amid mass demonstrations against government’s social policies, for which people came out on the streets of American cities, political radicalism through the revival of socialist parties happened due to certain reasons, as follows:

1. After the World War-II, there was a steady economic growth for two decades. Then an economic slowdown or slump started to happen. In such a situation, people became conscious of the role of the government – its successful schemes and failed projects. It was widely felt that the fruits of economic growth were not shared equally, and a substantive chunk of society was facing economic hardship. This fueled grievance against the government, and that’s how Civil rights Movements took place in almost all American cities during the late sixties.

2. Another point of discontent was Vietnam War where USA’s aggression was viewed as an imperialist hegemonic pursuit.By and large, it was against the essence of democracy which the USA preached and practiced. It not only led to the destruction of lives and properties of Vietnamese but also led to the death of US soldiers fighting in Vietnam. American people, especially the youth, revolted against the government for Vietnam War. Student protests were not only limited to its place of origin i.e. USA, but it expanded to several European countries also.

3. Problems of Black population, who lived in the shabby physical environment, started to emerge. Such problems pinpointed the failure of economic growth-centric government policies, which was running under the profit maximization policies.

III-Social Relevance Revolution

Given this context, a reassessment of purpose and methodologies of natural as well as social sciences began. It was felt that human being and their environment as a part of the earth is the most important subject that natural and social sciences should enquire in details. Geographers, who were working on the themes of “optimum location” of infrastructural facilities, now started to focus on the physical and social environment that surround people. This phase of revolution in geography, after the much-acclaimed quantitative revolution, is known as “radical revolution” or “social relevance revolution”.

III A-The Radical Stream of the Relevance Movement:

In fact, “radical revolution” emerged as a critique of quantitative revolution. During the 1950s, the philosophy of positivism and empiricism became very influential. Geographers, while interacting with other disciplines, also started applying various tools and techniques to analyze and explain the spatial variation of man-nature interaction. They got so engrossed in model building, that the theoretical approach towards looking at socio-economic problems was sidelined, and availability of data and application of techniques started to guide research procedures. In such a context, through “radical revolution”, a new discourse started that reminded geographers it is theoretical understanding that shows the path of research through an exploration of suitable dataset and methods, and not the other way round.

Radical viewpoint started through William Bunge’s work who wrote about Radicalist ideas in his book Theoretical Geography in 1962 and who founded Society for Human Exploration at Detroit in 1968. This Society urged geographers to undertake fieldwork in areas where poorest people live or the areas which are most backward and depressed. Such expeditions targeted to acquire firsthand and unbiased information of these areas so that a collective engagement with local people can bring meaningful inputs and bring about sound policy and planning framework. Few expeditions were carried out in Detroit. For providing training to aspirants who shown interest to participate in such expeditions, a course was opened at the University of Michigan. As university officials did not cooperate at the later stages, such expeditions were stopped in the USA. However, the expeditions continued in Toronto (Canada), Sydney (Australia) and London (England). Moreover, the Union of Socialist Geographers (USG) was established in 1974. Members of USG also participated in special sessions of AAG conventions and IBG annual meetings.

Radical ideas flourished in the hands of David Harvey and Richard Peet. Harvey wrote Social Justice and the City where he talked about Black people living in Ghettos. Richard Peet started to publish articles in a famous journal known as Antipode in Clarke University in Massachusetts in 1969. The issues in Antipode were quite revolutionary. They talked about urban poverty, discrimination against Blacks, feminism and cruelty against women, crime, deprivation, problems pertaining to minorities etc. Therefore, geography again got a breakthrough from its original systematic or regional approach when it started incorporating new social issues.

Due to increased poverty and inequality, especially poverty among the people of Ghetto and rural areas, Radicalists tried to perceive planning from a new viewpoint i.e. planning with the people rather than planning for the people. According to Harvey, geographers should consider the question as to who is going to control whom, in whose interest the controlling is going to be exercised and if it is exercised in the interest of people, who is going to take it upon himself to define that public interest.

Important features and objectives of the radical stream of relevance movement are following:

1. To expose the issues of discrimination, deprivation, inequalities, crimes, issues pertaining to health and mental degradation in the capitalistic society.

2. To pinpoint the weakness of Positivism and Quantitative Revolution in geography which emphasized geography as a spatial science and did not deal with the human issues.

3. To remove regional inequality.

4. Radicalists opposed economic and political concentration, imperialism and nationalism.

5. They opposed superiority of a particular race.

6. They also prescribed revolutionary changes in the work order to develop a tension-free peaceful environment for all.

Radicalism was developed as a critique of existing models, because such models especially those adopting a positivist methodology which was supposed to be value-neutral, was helping the imperialistic forces to maintain the status quo. Geography was a tool for imperialists. Radicalism was critical to this system.

Radicalists always talked from the standpoint of those people who were not in control of means of production (land, labour, capital, organization), and they always supported the downtrodden group of society. Radicalist thinking always went against nationalism. Before Radicalist thinking, geography was a science which protected the ideology of majority who owns the means of production. Radicalists criticized this scenario. It also developed as a protest against data. Radicalists thought of a society which is controlled by all.

Radicalistslike James Blaut (1970) attempted to link the issue of imperialism with capitalism. Imperialism denotes domination and subordination of one country to another – be it in economic or political terms. More developed countries had a tendency to control less developed ones, by exploiting natural resources and setting terms of trades often biased against less developed countries. Capitalistic countries, through this control, created a monopoly situation. Another issue was ethnocentrism, where an ethnic group was considered superior to another group(s). European ethnocentrism pointed towards the superiority of Europe over Asia and Africa, the superiority of Whites over non-Whites. It also showed the world how and why development persists in Europe. Blaut was very critical to this unicentric model and explained how Europe progressed at the cost of disrupting African and Asian countries. Imperialistic hegemony, through colonization of many African and Asian countries, paved the way for European countries to access billions of wealth. This led to the progress of Europe, in terms of expansion of industries, commercial activities, education, and technology. As the entire idea of racial superiority and ethnocentrism was based on certain prejudices, Radicalists opposed it.

Radicalists also opposed the way females were oppressed in developing and developed countries. Females were found to have an unequal role in terms of decision-making in households. They were systematically exploited, as their role was defined from a male perspective. They had relatively less mobility, and their role was defined to be restricted within household – cooking and taking care of children and so on.

To a certain extent, Radicalism was linked with anarchism. Anarchism called for the removal of state, and its replacement by voluntary groups of individuals. These individuals could work without external pressure and maintain social order. In a way, anarchism promoted individual liberalism and socialism. Peter Kroptokin and Elisee Reclus elaborated on the way by which such social orders can be maintained. Kroptokin attacked capitalism on the ground that it increased competition and inequalities. He commented that mutual cooperation and support help a community or a society to live peacefully. Cooperation based production, decision-making at grassroots level, the spread of democracy, greater integration of short-distanced workspace and living space were some of the ideals many Radical geographers followed.

III B-The Liberal Stream of the Relevance Movement:

Liberalism, although beliefs in democratic capitalism, advocates executive actions for minimizing social and spatial inequalities in the levels of human well-being. It shows a commitment towards ensuring a basic minimum level of standard of living for all. In this context, it prescribes state action in helping less privileged section of the human society. Statistical techniques, involving multiple variables, were applied to map levels of human being (Thompson and associates, 1962). The work done by Smith (1973) and Knox (1975) are often referred in geographical literature. Measurement and mapping of variables related to human well-being became important, and such variables were categorized into three sub-sets- “physical needs” (nutrition, shelter, and health), “cultural needs” (education, leisure, recreation and security), and “higher needs” (through surplus income). Their works show that geographers can play a significant role in informing policy-makers about the spatial implications of inequalities so that better decisions can be taken for improving policies and schemes further. Another part of these works is raising awareness among citizens so that they become better informed on welfare issues. Cox (1973) and Massam (1976) looked at how efficiently public services can be provided, by redrawing of administrative boundaries or changing the location of public facilities. In his seminal book, Human Geography: A Welfare Approach, David Smith (1977) focused on “who gets what, where and how”, and this reoriented the goal of human geography towards making a society where spatial malpractices and injustices are done away with. Therefore the “distribution” of fruits of economic growth emerged as an important issue.

     Moreover, this stream of social relevance movement advocates that our surrounding environment should be looked after well. Therefore, issues like environmental degradation-conservation-management are often discussed.

III-Towards Marxist Geography:

A great contribution of guiding geography towards Marxism happened through the works of David Harvey. In his book on Ghettos located in American cities, he pointed towards roots of problems that lie in capitalism. According to him, the capitalistic system created such a market-based mechanism, that regulate land use, and this is biased against the poor Black population. He argued that once a geographer adopts Marxist approach towards looking social problems, he or she cannot detach himself or herself. That’s why a political awareness is generated within them, and they get actively involved in making a society with more justice. Harvey’s influence was so strong that some practitioners of social relevance research started adopting a Marxist approach. Nowadays, radical geography is more aptly known as Marxist geography.

IV-Critique:

Social relevance movement, especially radicalism was able to usher in some fruitful changes in the methodological discourse of geographical studies. These are:

From the rhetoric of quantitative technique based analysis of geographical attributes, it reoriented human geography towards prominent social and environmental issues, thereby broadening the scope of geography to interact with other disciplines of social sciences.

The classical tradition of fieldwork in a small region was altered in the sense that more in-depth and participatory planning oriented studies were encouraged. This fieldwork entailed a new pattern where respondents were involved in the process of surveying. One needs to understand that this new pattern was quite challenging. The expeditions, promoted by the Society for Human Exploration, could not go on extensively due to multiple reasons (including existing power structure), even though it received a certain chunk of academic interest.

Some of the limitations or weaknesses of radicalism are:

First criticism came from Russians who claimed themselves as true Communists and Marxists. Radicalism was entirely an American enterprise. Though Radicalists in America talked about the social change they never talked about an armed revolution which is a basic component of Marxist ideology.

The theoretical base of radicalism was very weak. Basically, they were dependent on other social sciences. Whatever Harvey discussed in Social Justice and the City were basically sociological, political or economic analysis.

Though the topic of radicalism was varied, the techniques and methodologies were not very path-breaking.

Radicalism gave over-weight to Marxism. Geography, by virtue of its subject matter, is a spatial science. It cannot be explained totally with the help of Marxist thinking.

The ultimate question was ‘Who will guard the guardians’? Even socialist governments following models of Marx could not solve problems of the oppressed class.

Humanistic geographers criticized radicalists because the former gave more emphasis on people, not as an ideology like the Radicalists. Humanistic geography says that geography cannot be explained through any generalized theory. It is human-specific.

Positivists criticized radicalism because they don’t take help from any empirical science.

After the fall of USSR and East European nations in the end of 1980s, the worldwide impression was that socialism has no value and capitalism has won its final victory. Therefore, geography is essentially a locational science which is based on empirical positivist values, which is the tool of capitalists.

References

• Dikshit, R D (2013): Geographical Thought: A Contextual History of Ideas, PHI Learning Private Limited
• Husain, Majid (2010), Evolution of Geographical Thought, Rawat Publications, New Delhi Peet, Richard (2011): Modern Geographical Thought, Rawat Publications
• Gregory D, R Johnston, G Pratt, M Watts and S Whatmore (2009): Dictionary of Human Geography, Wiley Blackwell