[Hermeneutics] Understanding the Understanding of Understandings

For too long the word "hermeneutics" has suggested (in my mind) something along the lines of the study of fictional hobbit communities. Needless to say, this is not really what the term means. Luckily, some of the readings that my colleagues and I looked at this week have enabled me to transcend (at least to a small degree) my former ignorance on this matter!

We were reading about the turn from the 'quantitative revolution' to the 'cultural turn' in the field of human geography (and economic geography in particular). The quantitative revolution came about in the 1950s and 1960s when numerous geographers began to adopt "both inferential statistical techniques and abstract models and theories" which led to "a new nomothetic geography conducted as spatial science" (Barnes, 2009). By contrast, the cultural turn arose in the 1980s, seeing an increasing focus on culture in many areas of human geography and an appreciation of more 'qualitative methods' (Barnett, 2009).

As Trevor Barnes (2001) has argued, the nature of theory and theorizing is substantially different between the two 'eras'. Theorizing during the quantitative era is best characterized by an 'epistemological' approach, wherein "the central task of theorizing is to develop abstract vocabularies that mirror - albeit approximately - an external and independent reality" (546). Put most simply, epistemological theories are abstract models that help us understand 'reality'. Now, as you might surmise, Barnes argues that the type of theorizing characteristic of the cultural turn is 'hermeneutic', which he defines as theorizing that "has an openness both to a wide range of theoretical sources and to the very definition of theory" (547).

Barnes (2001) has a number of statements which are very helpful in further defining hermeneutics:

• "[Hermeneutics] recognizes that no vocabulary is perfect and that a vocabulary that provides for commensurability... does not exist" (550);
• "Hermeneutics... always tries to negotiate a knife-edge between... the hope that there can be full agreement about a vocabulary and the suspicion that a better alternative is available" (551);
• "Hermeneutics conceives theorizing as a creative and open-ended process of interpretation that is circular, reflexive, indeterminate, and perspectival" (551; Barnes references Bohman 1993, 116);
• "Hermeneutics rejects fixed and final foundations" (551);
• "Hermeneutics promotes experimentation and engagement with radically different vocabularies, pressing them as far as they will go..." (551);
• "Hermeneutics cultivates critical self-awareness of social and historical location and recognizes its influence on knowledge..." (551);
• "Hermeneutic theorizing shuns disembodied vision as a metaphorical bluebrint" (551);
• "Hermeneutic tradition is not only about understanding the world; it also concerns itself with understanding understandings of the world, including that of the author herself or himself" (549)

In reading about hermeneutics I recalled how I had previously known about an association between hermeneutics and the Frankfurt School, but I didn't quite know what that association was... and so this recent exploration of hermeneutics has provided an opportunity to learn more about that connection.

As it turns out, hermeneutics has an incredible philosophical history dating back to the Ancient Greeks (etymologically the term comes from the Greek god Hermes, who was the "tutelary divinity of speech, writing and eloquence"). The tradition and evolution of the term (and debate surrounding it) has been carried-out by the likes of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, von Humboldt, Heidegger, and yes - the Frankfurt School's Jürgen Habermas (Ramberg and Gjesdal, 2005).

And what was Habermas' contribution? Well, in short, he came up with a critique of Heidegger's 'ontological hermeneutics' and the latter's student - Hans Georg Gadamer's 'hermeneutic humanism'. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains, until Heidegger, hermeneutics was really about understanding linguistic communication. Yet "as far as Heidegger is concerned, hermeneutics is [actually about] ontology; it is about the most fundamental conditions of man's being in the world"(Ramberg and Gjesdal, 2005). Gadamer adds to Heidegger's hermeneutics by "exploring the consequences of [ontological hermeneutics] for our understanding of the human sciences," arguing that there are limitations to understanding human 'being' - human tradition and our selves - because we can never really master the texts of the past.

Habermas, however, argued that Gadamer did not fully considered his own political and ideological presuppositions:

In Habermas's view, Gadamer places too much emphasis on the authority of tradition, leaving no room for critical judgment and reflection. Reason is denied the power of a critical, distanced judgment. What is needed is therefore not just an analysis of the way in which we de facto are conditioned by history but a set of quasi-transcendental principles of validity in terms of which the claims of the tradition may be subjected to evaluation. Hermeneutics, Habermas argues, must be completed by a critical theory of society (Ramberg and Gjesdal, 2005).

In short, Habermas wants to use hermeneutics as a tool to understand where our understandings are coming from, in order to work towards social justice and emancipation. As Nickelson (2009) explains:

What Habermas aims to demonstrate through his own work, however, is that traditions can contain what he calls ‘systematically distorted communication’, a type of communication that falls short of an ideal of how communication should function and produces a response that is somehow tainted. This less-than-ideal type of communication can reinforce relations of domination. Accordingly, Habermas argues that systematically distorted communication precludes any necessary relationship between the prejudgments inherited from a tradition and knowledge, and that insofar as a tradition reproduces relations of domination the prejudgments upon which it depends are illegitimate.

If your head is not spinning yet, you're probably not normal or have some kind of predisposition towards political philosophy. Nevertheless, I think you'll agree that it is possible to see some strands of Habermas' critique in Barnes' contemporary understanding of hermeneutics as an understanding of understandings... Understand?

References
Barnes, Trevor. "Retheorizing Economic Geography: From the Quantitative Revolution to the 'Cultural Turn'," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 91, No. 3, 2001, pp. 546-565.

Barnes, Trevor. "Quantitative Revolution" in Derek Gregory et al. [eds.], The Dictionary of Human Geography (Fifth Edition). West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

Barnett, Clive. "Cultural Turn" in Derek Gregory et al. [eds.], The Dictionary of Human Geography (Fifth Edition). West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

Bohman, J. New Philosophy of Social Science: Problems of indeterminacy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993.

Nickelson, Dylan. "Habermas's Objections to the Politics of Gadamer's Hermeneutics," The Lydian Mode, http://thelydianmode.com/2009/12/habermas-gadamer/

Ramberg, Bjørn and Kristin Gjesdal. "Hermeneutics," in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (November, 2005), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/

[Mapping] Janus: God of Maps?

Over the weekend, a friend who I hadn't seen for a while poked fun at me when he learned that I was doing a PhD in Geography: "So, you just sit around and look at maps all day?" Despite the antagonistic jibe, the reality is that most people out there associate geography with an intensive study of maps... yet in reality, most geographers (both in the human and physical streams) tend to be less interested in maps, and more interested in explaining and understanding either human or natural phenomena and/or their interactions. In short, true to it's broad and literal meaning - 'geo-graphy' (from the Greek words meaning 'Earth description') includes a vast array of works in which this planet (and/or any of its component parts or social elements) is further explored. Maps are just one of myriad ways to 'describe Earth'.

That said, today is Geographic Information Systems (GIS) day, and last week in our doctoral seminar we read a whole lot about maps, and so alas, I am compelled to write a word or two about maps. I have two things I want to say. Or more accurately, it's one reflection on the Janus-faced nature of maps: On the one hand, maps have an incredible 'democratic' potential to store and impart useful knowledge to be used by anyone; on the other hand, we should never forget that maps are subjective tools which have all too often been used for tyrannical purposes.


As David Harvey once put it, throughout the imperial (capitalist) era, the human experience has been largely shaped by "the absolute authority of the clock and the tyranny of the cadastral map" (1996: 224). Although Harvey's sentiment is somewhat alarmist, it is possible to see the tyrannical nature of maps upon closer observation. Among other things, maps have been used to parcel up land; justify expropriation; deny the existence of indigenous peoples; erase history; enclose the commons; mark forbidden territories; foster racism, Orientalism, and other 'othering'; uphold the status quo; excuse plunder and invasion; and enable fascist conquerors and greedy colonists. In short, maps have been used by the rich and powerful for the maintenance of wealth and authority. The act of mapping is - like any other form of 'scientific' observation - an act in asserting one's (presumably superior) knowledge over a place, space, or social setting. It wasn't until the 1980s that philosopher and historian of cartography Brian Harley helped problematize and contest the dominant cartographic paradigm at the time, which saw maps as 'objective', 'scientific', 'representations of the world'. As Denis Wood explains, "Brian [Harley] insisted on resituating maps as political documents inculpated in the creation and maintenance of social power" (2002: 140).

Harley's lesson is that maps serve a purpose; their [map]makers have both an internal and external audience for whom they are making the map, whether or not this is explicitly shown on the map's surface. For example, the Gall-Peters Projection map of the world, shown above (upside down), brands itself as a map which 'accurately' displays the earth's area in a rectangle. When Arno Peters released this map in 1973 it caused a firestorm of controversy. Peters intended the map to correct the Mercator projection, which inflates areas further from the equator (this makes Greenland look bigger than Africa on the Mercator map, when in fact Africa is 14 times larger). The Peters map also moved the lateral center of the world map Eastward (making the Bering Strait line fall down the middle rather than the Greenwich line, which implicitly favors the British Empire a position at the metaphorical top and center of the world). But the Peters' map is not without its own problems. Detractors point to problems with distance fidelity and other distortions caused by trying to match spherical area into two dimensions. While defenders of the Peters' map say it offers a fairer depiction of the relative sizes of continents, thus offering more agency to the 'developing world', one might ask why this maps has failed to challenge other conventions of institutionalized power, like why the Northern Hemisphere gets to go 'on top', or the presumed division of the continents (note the varying choices of colour to denote separate and distinct spaces), or the magnetic orientation of the planet, etc.

However, if we can get over the tyrannical nature of maps, keep it in mind, put it in our back pocket, then we can surely appreciate the benefit of maps in this day of advanced computing technology. Today, with a simple internet connection, one can take a virtual tour of just about any street in North America and visualize from one's own home what the world looks like elsewhere. Today, thanks to popular mapping technologies, we have relatively up-to-date geographic information available for the average computer user, almost instantaneously. Some have termed this the 'democratization' of GIS, and aside from the problems of internet accessibility faced by the majority of the world's inhabitants, this term is somewhat apt in its characterization of the new 'everybody-rules' nature of maps ['somewhat' because one might say that rather than the people ruling GIS it is actually one mega-corporation ruling the people through tools like popular GIS... but this is a whole other can of worms]. Part of the 'democratization' of mapping comes from the ability of individuals to contribute to what Goodchild (2007) calls VGI - volunteered geographic information. Thanks to Web 2.0, Goodchild explains, we can all take part (and many of us have taken part) in voluntarily mapping the world - by uploading pictures and tagging them to places, by building our own maps and correcting information on GoogleMaps, by designing buildings for Google Earth, mashing up the new and old maps, and volunteering all types of cartographic information as private citizens. In short, people themselves have become the sensors used by the big map-maker(s) of the 21st Century.

Already, as noted by Goodchild et al. (2008), the capacity of GIS has far surpassed what we expected was impossible only a decade ago, thanks to the ability to store ever larger quantities of digital information. Four dimensional maps (showing the element of change over time) are now commonplace in certain domains. For example, I can track changing weather patterns in my community and log on to to the internet to see how traffic is flowing across town.

But we have a long way to go before the next generation of 'digital earth' is arrived. In this era of climatic and environmental change, the ability to better map biological, atmospheric, topographical and human land use changes could play an instrumental role in motivating human/political action on the presently sad state of ecology. Just imagine the ability to log into Google Maps and with the click of a few buttons isolate a time map of the world's atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide from 1600AD to 2020AD. NASA has already built some models that allow you to do such a thing, and it's is only a matter of time (and of course, new innovations in 'cloud' computing) that anybody and everybody could design their own 4-dimensional [or higher*] maps.

Maps are here to stay, but despite the tendency of catographic democratization, we should be ever wary of the map's second face of tyranny.

* Through VGI, individuals may one day be able to upload complete virtual streetscapes, enabling map-viewers to encounter not just the sights of other places over time, but sounds, smells and physical sensations such as temperatures - hey, it sounds crazy, but then again, it wasn't that long ago that the 'internet' itself sounded pretty crazy.

[Musing] A Brief Foray Into the Name of Political Ecology

When Piers Blaikie wrote The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries in 1985, he helped lay the groundwork for what eventually would come to be known as 'political ecology' (so argue Raymond Bryant and Michael K. Goodman, 2008). Before then, explain Bryant and Goodman, the assumption in geography and other disciplines was that the environment could be understood and managed through natural science models. But with Blaikie's 1985 book, political economy became a defining factor in interpreting environmental change and degradation. At this point, political economy was already a well established term, but political ecology was not. Thus, in part, the latter can arguably be seen as a play-on term stemming from the former.

In English, the term 'political economy' dates back to Sir James Steuart’s An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy (1776). Following Steuart, political economy became a well-established field of inquiry, practiced most famously throughout the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries by Adam Smith, David Hume, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Malthus, and of course, the field's biggest critic - Karl Marx. For the most part, these authors saw themselves as 'political economists' - hence the title of Marx's formative Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy (1858).

Yet the foundational authors of political ecology may not necessarily have interpreted their project in those terms. As Blaikie has explained (2007), most of the authors who, like himself, were associated with political ecology (PE), were associated ex post: "By the end of the 1980s PE as a self-conscious reference point began to appear and authors such as Blaikie and Brookfield (1987), Bassett (1988), Black (1990), Bryant (1992), Neumann (1992), Moore (1993), Escobar (1996), Muldavin (1996), Bryant and Bailey (1997), Scott and Sullivan (2000) amongst many others, began to use the term and thereby proclaimed themselves as operating in and thus defining, the field" (Blaikie, 2007: 766). In the 1990s key texts (by Zimmerer and Basset, 2003; Peet and Watts, 2004; and Robbins, 2004) helped to further add definition to this 'field'.

Nevertheless, the term 'political ecology' originally dates back to the 1935, when it was oddly used as a heading for a column by Frank Thone in The Science News Letter discussing the role of grass as a cause of war. Then again the term was used (in somewhat of a different context) by Albert Lepawsky (1936) in an article in The American Political Science Review about political reforms then being carried by the German Reich ("State boundaries and state sovereignty can be liquidated, but can the Nazis transform the political ecology of a country which... is the most urban in the world...?")!

Throughout the ensuing decades the term 'political ecology' is used in a variety of contexts, but it is not until the 1970s that it begins to take on something akin to its contemporary meaning of "an approach to... the complex metabolism between nature and society" (Eric Sheppard, The Dictionary of Human Geography, 2009). Outside of the academy, the term was used to refer to the politicization of environmental problems - in short, it came to be associated with the environmental movement itself! In the academy, political ecology seems to arise from a confluence of three subfields: cultural ecology, ecological anthropology, and Marxist-inspired political economy. These influences finally come together in Piers Blaikie's seminal book, and the rest is history.