Teaching and Learning Guide for: Thinking Beyond Place: The Responsibilities of a Relational Spatial Politics
Authors: Darling Jonathan 
Published: June 2010

This guide accompanies the following article: Jonathan Darling, ‘Thinking Beyond Place: The Responsibilities of a Relational Spatial Politics’, Geography Compass 3(5) (2009): 1938–1954, doi: 10.1111/j.1749‐8198.2009.00262.x

Author’s Introduction

Accounts of space and place as relational constructions have become increasingly dominant within contemporary human geography as cities in particular are presented as sites situated within networks and flows of connection and interaction. Such work has led to a series of political assertions and subsequent contests. In particular, it is argued that a relational account of place demands a focus on: responsibility both within place, to internal heterogeneity, and beyond place, to the links and connections that sustain place. In such a politics, moments of negotiation and the articulation of multiple demands take centre stage. A number of geographers have begun to challenge such accounts of political practice, arguing that politics remains both a territorially bound, and relationally connected, phenomena. This paper examines these debates over the constitution of place politics, in order to suggest that they might help to develop geography’s sense of ethical engagement with both distant, and proximate, strangers.

Author Recommends

1. Massey, D. (2007). World city. Cambridge: Polity.

A clear and accessible account of how a city, in this case London, is constructed through an array of connections and relations both to difference within and beyond its limits. Massey begins to articulate an account of ‘politics beyond place’ here and clearly outlines the varied spatial scales wherein the responsibilities of place might be drawn.

2. Malpass, A., Cloke, P., Barnett, C. and Clarke, N. (2007). Fairtrade urbanism? The politics of place beyond place in the Bristol fair‐trade city campaign. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31, pp. 633–645, doi: 10.1111/j.1468‐2427.2007.00747.x

Malpass et al. provide one of the best applications of Massey’s account of a ‘politics beyond place’, considering how a relational account of the city might be applied to the Fairtrade cities movement. They consider issues of ethical consumption and relations of distance and proximity through interrogating the local–global narratives deployed to promote an idea of fair trade relations within place.

3. Massey, D. (2004). Geographies of responsibility. Geografiska Annaler 86 (B), pp. 5–18, doi: 10.1111/j.0435‐3684.2004.00150.x

This is the paper in which Massey begins to consider the ethical implications of relational thought, through posing a challenge to think politically, and responsibly, about the connections of place. Massey argues for a politics of connectivity, yet one which is sensitive to the specificities, and responsibilities, of place, and in doing so begins to consider how such a politics might be developed in London, a charge she develops further in World City. On the political implications of relational thought, see also the other papers in this special issue of Geografiska Annaler.

4. Popke, E. J. (2007). Geography and ethics: spaces of cosmopolitan responsibility. Progress in Human Geography 31, pp. 509–518. doi: 10.1177/0309132507077090

This paper provides an up‐to‐date review of recent work on ethics within geography with a particular focus upon issues of cosmopolitan thought and responsibility to strangers both proximate and distant. Popke provides a clear review of different approaches to the demands of urban cosmopolitanism and argues for a localised, and open, engagement with different geographical imaginations placing in question as a result many of our current spatial certainties.

5. Smith, D. M. (1998). How far should we care? On the spatial scope of beneficence. Progress in Human Geography 22, pp. 15–38, doi: 10.1191/030913298670636601

This is an agenda‐setting paper for considering the role that distance and proximity play within ethical discussions and decisions. Smith considers the history of geography’s engagement with ethical theories and clearly examines the challenges posed by both partialist and impartialist accounts of ethical action. Drawing on feminist accounts of an ethic of care, Smith suggests that geography has a key role to play in envisioning an account of ethical thought and action, which is neither a parochial partiality nor a dispassionate impartial universality, but which places the negotiations of demands for care as central.

6. Allen, J. (2008). Claiming connections: a distant world of sweatshops? In: Barnett, C., Robinson, J. and Rose, G. (eds) Geographies of globalisation: a demanding world. London: Sage/Milton Keynes, The Open University

Chapter one of this edited collection examines the spatial connections of contemporary consumption, in particular through the case of sweatshop labour exploitation. In a clearly written and accessible chapter, Allen considers how issues of exploitation are actively distanced from consumers, while antisweatshop movements use a vocabulary of connection and responsibility to make such issues proximate and demanding. Further chapters in this collection on the demands of citizenship (chapter three) and international politics (chapter eight) are also recommended.

7. Castree, N. (2004). Differential geographies: place, indigenous rights and ‘local’ resources. Political Geography 23, pp. 133–167, doi: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2003.09.010

This paper provides a clear overview, and critique, of different areas of relational thought within geography. It examines the contradictions within relational accounts of spatial practice and politics, suggesting a more nuanced take on sociospatial relations. Empirically, Castree provides a detailed reading of the tensions and political negotiations of the global indigenous peoples’ movement, negotiations that he argues are shot through with different spatial imaginaries.

8. Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (2002). Cities: reimagining the urban. Cambridge: Polity.

This is a book that altered the ways in which geographers approach the city. Amin and Thrift’s analysis of the interwoven nature of propinquity and flow within the city (chapter two) was one of the first examples of a relational approach being taken to the urban. The book also begins the process of teasing out many of the political implications of a more mobile account of urban life and spatiality.

Online Materials

1. Fairtrade Towns

http://www.fairtradetowns.org

The website of the Fairtrade Foundation’s Fairtrade Towns initiative. The website includes details on those towns and cities currently holding fairtrade status, how cities, and citizens, can become involved in the campaign and an array of resources for supporting and starting local campaigns. Here there is a focus on how local actions within communities around consumption patterns and decisions can have widespread impacts on livelihoods and communities across the globe.

2. SweatFree Communities

http://www.sweatfree.org

The website of a community based social movement promoting local, place specific, action to challenge the exploitation of workers in sweatshops internationally. The movement focuses on activism to promote sweatfree procurement measures among local authorities and organisations as a means to take responsibility for local consumption. The website thus contains details of their Sweatfree Cities initiative as a grassroots effort to encourage the adoption of sweatfree procurement on a city‐wide basis.

3. National Coalition of Anti‐Deportation Campaigns

http://www.ncadc.org.uk

NCADC is a campaigning organisation focused on the rights of asylum seekers and refugees in the UK. In particular, the group assist in campaigns against deportations and lobby for the halting of unjust and inhuman deportation practices. Their website contains details of past and present campaigns, how UK residents can become involved in challenging deportations, and focuses upon the ethical responsibility of citizens to do so.

Sample Syllabus

The series of discussion sessions detailed below are conceived as part of a wider course on contemporary spatial and political theory. It is intended that such a course would reflect a mix of theoretically and empirically centred work. The aim of this section of the course would be to examine what political and ethical implications arise from relational accounts of space and place.

Week I: Introducing relational spatial thought

This session introduces this area of geographical thought by examining how space has been conceived as a relational entity. The distinction between notions of place as a bounded container of social activity and identity and relational suggestions that places are the articulation of bundles of connections is emphasised as the basis for differing political positions and stances in relation to calls for ethical responsibility.

Reading

Amin, A. (2002). Spatialities of globlization. Environment and Planning A 34, pp. 385–399.

Darling, J. (2009). Thinking beyond place: the responsibilities of a relational spatial politics. Geography Compass 3, pp. 1938–1954.

Harvey, D. (2006). Space as a keyword. In: Castree, N. and Gregory, D. (eds) David Harvey: a critical reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 270–294.

Massey, D. (2005). For space. London: Sage.

Murdoch, J. (2006). Post‐structural geography: a guide to relational space. London: Sage.

Thrift, N. (1996). Spatial formations. London: Sage.

Week II: The politics of place

Relational accounts of space and place are argued to construct a particular form of political engagement, one centred upon both dealing with the claims of proximate others and negotiating the demands of more distant connections. A distinction is drawn here between inward focused ‘place‐bound’ political projects, and more ‘progressive’ and ‘outward looking’‘place‐based’ political projects.

Reading

Amin, A. (2004). Regions unbound: towards a new politics of place. Geografiska Annaler 86 (B), pp. 33–44.

Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (2005). Citizens of the world: seeing the city as a site of international influence. Harvard International Review 27, pp. 14–17.

Malpass, A., Cloke, P., Barnett, C. and Clarke, N. (2007). Fairtrade urbanism? The politics of place beyond place in the Bristol Fairtrade City Campaign. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31, pp. 633–645.

Massey, D. (1999). Spaces of politics. In: Massey, D., Allen, J. and Sarre, P. (eds) Human geography today. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 279–294.

Massey, D. (2007). World city. Cambridge: Polity.

May, J. (1996). Globalization and the politics of place: place and identity in an inner London neighbourhood. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 21, pp. 194–214.

Week III: Territorial challenges

A number of areas of work have begun to challenge the political assumptions of relational modes of thought. In particular, work on geographical regions has suggested that the distinctions between territorial, place‐bound politics and a more relational, place‐based account are drawn too tightly. The critiques of relational thought posed here suggest that there need not be a privileging of a particular form of political spatiality at the expense of all others.

Reading

Castree, N. (2004). Differential geographies: place, indigenous rights and ‘local’ resources. Political Geography 23, pp. 133–167.

Jessop, B., Brenner, B. and Jones, M. (2008). Theorizing socio‐spatial relations. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26, pp. 389–401.

Jones, M. (2009). Phase space: geography, relational thinking, and beyond. Progress in Human Geography 33, pp. 487–506.

MacLeod, G. and Jones, M. (2007). Territorial, scalar, networked, connected: in what sense a ‘regional world’? Regional Studies 41, pp. 1171–1191.

Week IV: Distant demands and ethical geography

Research on ethics within geography has focused in part upon the demands that distant obligations pose, and on the role that distance might play in moral partiality. A relational account of space begins to question some of the spatial assumptions that underpin such work, and argues for a more political sense of spatial implication and responsibility. A relational account of responsibility is therefore seen to act as an intervention into discussions over moral partiality.

Reading

Barnett, C. and Land, D. (2007). Geographies of generosity: beyond the ‘moral turn’. Geoforum 38, pp. 1065–1075.

Corbridge, S. (1993). Marxisms, modernities, and moralities: development praxis and the claims of distant strangers. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 11, pp. 449–472.

Darling, J. (2009). Thinking beyond place: the responsibilities of a relational spatial politics. Geography Compass 3, pp. 1938–1954.

Massey, D. (2004). Geographies of responsibility. Geografiska Annaler 86 (B), pp. 5–18.

Smith, D. M. (1998). How far should we care? On the spatial scope of beneficence. Progress in Human Geography 22, pp. 15–38.

Week V: Placing responsibilities

This session focuses upon examining how geographers have begun to put ideas of the relational responsibilities of place into action. There has been a focus here on both tracing responsibilities temporally, through issues such as reparations for slavery and indigenous land rights movements and, spatially, through the example of sweatshop campaigns.

Reading

Allen, J. (2008). Claiming connections: a distant world of sweatshops? In: Barnett, C., Robinson, J. and Rose, G. (eds) Geographies of globalisation: a demanding world. London: Sage/Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 7–54.

Gatens, M. and Lloyd, G. (1999). Collective imaginings: Spinoza, past and present. London: Routledge.

Pile, S. (2008). A haunted world: the unsettling demands of a globalised past. In: Barnett, C., Robinson, J. and Rose, G. (eds) Geographies of globalisation: a demanding world. London: Sage/Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 237–287.

Young, I. M. (2004). Responsibility and global labor justice. The Journal of Political Philosophy 12, pp. 365–388.

Week VI: Negotiating spatial grammars

This final session looks towards how these varied stands of political negotiation and demand might be taken forward through recent work within geography on the spatialities of social movements. Here, a relational account of space is taken as simply one form of political articulation and is seen to interact with other political scales and practices. Responsibility, it is argued, arises from pursuing socially just policies and politics through the intersection of different spatial articulations.

Reading

Allen, J. and Cochrane, A. (2007). Beyond the territorial fix: regional assemblages, politics and power. Regional Studies 41, pp. 1161–1176.

Beaumont, J. and Nicholls, W. (2007). Between relationality and territoriality: investigating the geographies of justice movements in The Netherlands and the United States. Environment and Planning A 39, pp. 2554–2574.

Massey, D. (2008). Geographies of solidarities. In: Clark, N., Massey, D. and Sarre, P. (eds) Material geographies: a world in the making. London: Sage/Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 311–362.

Nicholls, W. (2009). Place, networks, space: theorising the geographies of social movements Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34, pp. 78–93.

Popke, E. J. (2007). Geography and ethics: spaces of cosmopolitan responsibility. Progress in Human Geography 31, pp. 509–518.

Focus Questions

 Where do the responsibilities of a given place begin and end?

 Who should decide upon these responsibilities?

 What challenges does a campaign such as the Fairtrade Towns movement pose to our sense of responsibility towards others?

 In what ways might geographical distance impact on our accounts of responsibility? What examples are there of this?

 Is a relational account of place illustrative of a cosmopolitan outlook?