The Dictionary of Human Geography

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(1982, vol. 4, p. 544) wrote, ‘Everything

that can happen by chance, sometime or

other will happen by chance. Chance will

sometime bring about a change in every

condition.’

(5) ‘Radical pluralism’, the belief that nei-

ther bits of the world nor of philosophy

coherently fit together all of piece. Rad-

ical pluralism, as James (1977, p. 26)

writes, is a ‘turbid, muddled, Gothic

sort of affair without a sweeping outline

and little pictorial nobility’. But for

James it is all we have.

The rise of analytical philosophy in America

from the 1940s brought with it everything that

pragmatism formerly shunned –foundation-

alism, certainty, individual rationality, neces-

sity and monism. Consequently, pragmatism

was pushed, and sometimes shoved aside.

After his death Dewey, for example, was

regarded by one analytical philosopher as ‘a

nice old man who hadn’t the vaguest concep-

tion of real philosophical rigor or the nature of

a real philosophical problem’ (quoted in

Gouinlock, 1972, p. xi). Analytical philoso-

phy’s hold on the profession was relatively

short-lived, however, and by the 1980s it was

vigorously challenged by a new group of prag-

matists, including Richard Rorty (1931–2007)

and Richard Bernstein (b.1932).

Rorty, drawing upon the writings of Dewey

and James, seeks first to dismantle from the

inside out the edifice of contemporary analyt-

ical philosophy, especially the variant known as

realism; and, second, to substitute for it, a

neo-pragmatic alternative which he calls, pos-

sibly tongue-in-cheek, ‘postmodernist liberal

bourgeois ironism’ (Rorty, 1989). Very briefly,

Rorty argues that the problems of analytical

philosophy stem from its appropriation of an

inappropriatemetaphor, vision or sight, or

‘ocularism’. The metaphor mistakenly con-

vinced philosophers that it was possible for

the mind to mirror the world (cf.vision and

visuality). In contrast Rorty, following the

pragmatists, argues for a different central meta-

phor, ‘conversation’. Under this model there

are no fixed end points, strict rules or necessary

logics. This is evident by unpacking the terms

of Rorty’s alternative: ‘postmodernist’

because Rorty does not believe in the grand

metanarratives of highmodernismthat sup-

posedly make all parts of the world commen-

surable; ‘liberal’ because for the conversation

to continue there must be freedom of expres-

sion and democracy (thereby echoing Dewey’s

concerns); ‘bourgeois’ because Rorty thinks

thatliberalismhas so far only been possible

under capitalism; and ‘irony’ because for the

conversation to continue we need to affirm

certain beliefs even though there are no firm

philosophical foundations for them. Rorty

approvingly quotes Joseph Schumpeter

(1942, p. 243), who says that one needs ‘to

realise the relative validity of one’s convictions

and yet stand for them unflinchingly’.

While sympathetic to many of Rorty’s ideas,

Bernstein (1992b, ch. 8) is sharply critical of

his economic conservatism, and his disengage-

ment from questions of unequal power and

resources. Bernstein (1992b, p. 233), says that

Rorty’s version of pragmatism is ‘little more

than an apologia for the status quo’. In con-

trast, Bernstein deals with those absences by

joining to pragmatism various strands of con-

tinental European philosophy, producing what

he calls ‘the new constellation’ (Bernstein,

1992b). An important component within

Bernstein’s mix are writers identified with

post-structuralism such as Foucault and

Derrida, who are not economic conservatives,

and who deal vitally with questions of unequal

power and resources. In no small part, the

renaissance of American pragmatism is a

result of its resonance with the concerns of

those writers.

In human geography, there have been

sporadic, but neither consistent nor concerted,

attempts to draw upon pragmatist writers.

Jackson and Smith (1984) utilize Mead’s more

applied prescriptions in their portrayal of

social geography; Westcoat (1992) describes

the relation between White’s environmental

outlook, and particularly Dewey’s ideas; both

Barnes (1996, chs. 2 and 5) and Gibson-

Graham (2006b [1996]) make use of Rorty’s

work in countering essentialism in economic

geography; and Sunley (1996) takes the ideas

of another ex-analytical-philosopher-turned-

pragmatist, Hilary Putnam, and puts them to

work in a discussion of the relationship

between the newinstitutional economics

andeconomic geography. A special issue of

Geoforum(2008) is devoted to assessing the

usefulness of pragmatism for human geog-

raphy and connecting it to contemporary intel-

lectual formations: thus Allen (2008)

conducts a series of radical experiments that

insert pragmatism into the play ofpower,

Bridge (2008) reactivates pragmatism in

theorizations ofperformativityandspatial-

ity, while Jones (2008) identifies a series of

connections between pragmatism, post-

structuralism and non-representational

theory. tb

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PRAGMATISM