The Dictionary of Human Geography

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Radical democracy also has implications
forsocialandcultural geography, given
its attention to multiple axes ofpowerthat
work through multiple subject identities (see
identity,subjectivity). How identities are
enabled and constrained as the subject moves
throughspace, for example, has been a point
of interest for radical democratic geographers
(e.g. Massey, 1995). Rejectingessentialism,
radical democracy implores a sensitivity to
the openness and fluidity of the subject. It
challenges the will for politics to fixate or
prioritize a single identity to the exclusion or
devaluation of others (e.g. where orthodox
marxismmight privilegeclassstruggle over
genderoppression).
This has been challenged byradical geo-
graphy, which questions how one can have a
politics without at least some ethical or polit-
ical commitments that must be treated as
essentialisms. A second criticism takes form
around the question of the constitutive outside
of the political. Simply put, even the most
post-structural of scholars has questioned
whether or not we can ever have a democratic
politics without some form of a constitutive
outside. Whenever there is a ‘we’ (or a ‘here’),
there is by definition, a ‘they’ (or a ‘there’)
who are ‘outside’ of deliberation or perhaps
evenrecognition. Yet logically such a border
itself might be quite anti-democratic. If the
promise is to always attack and render such
exclusionary political geographies, the political
issue at hand becomes deflected, and in-
evitably lost in an infinite regress of attending
to exclusions. Conversely, foreclosures and
boundaries around what is worthy of the
appellation ‘politics’ or ‘political’ are inher-
ently anti-democratic since they leave no space
for those harmed by such foreclosures.
Addressing these paradoxes, political theor-
ists advocate open, iterative andreflexive
standpoints in order to address these tensions,
but they admit these are by no means ‘solu-
tions’ to the dilemma. mb

Suggested reading
Mouffe (1993); Rasmussen and Brown (2002).

radical geography Approaches to geog-
raphycommitted to overturning relations of
power and oppression, and to constructing
more socially just, egalitarian and liberating
geographies and ways of living. The term
came to refer in particular to critiques of
spatial scienceandpositivismin geography
during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and
to attempts to chart alternatives that were

socially relevant and sought fundamental
change. Many geographers were radicalized
by counter-culture movements and by waves
of political protest at the time; in particular,
struggles involving civilrightsand against
the Vietnam War,imperialism,povertyand
inequality. They reacted against technocratic
approaches in geography that were unable to
speak to current pressing problems and that
served to support the status quo, and they
sought to study social issues from contrasting
viewpoints, especially those based on socialist,
feminist and anti-imperialist perspectives. The
establishment ofAntipode: a Radical Journal of
Geographyin 1969 by students and faculty at
Clark University, Massachusetts, provided an
important forum for Anglophone geographers,
with the opening issue declaring that it was
both necessary and possible to change univer-
sity structures and ways of doing geography,
and to revolutionize the social and physical
environment
Early issues ofAntipodewere urgent, ques-
tioning, optimistic, combative in style and
diverse in content. Articles addressed issues
such as poverty, housing, services, planning,
research methodologies, imperialism, women
and war. The rediscovery of earlier radical
traditions of social concern in geography – in
particular, the anarchist geography of
Kropotkin and Reclus – inspired many. Others
conducted advocacy research and experimen-
ted with taking geography into the streets,
including through Bunge’s ‘geographical
expeditions’ that worked with low-income and
disenfranchised communities. Organizations
such as the Union of Socialist Geographers,
founded in 1974, advanced a radical presence
in the discipline. According to Peet, however,
early radical geography was ‘more relevant to
social issues but still tied to aphilosophyof
science, a set of theories, and amethodology
developed within the existing framework of
power relationships’ (Peet, 1977b, p. 12).
Calls for overhauling the discipline’s theoretical
basis to address the deep causes rather than the
surface manifestations of problems led to a
‘breakthrough tomarxism’ in the early to mid-
1970s, as the work of Harvey and others paved
the way for the analysis ofcapitalismandclass
struggle (Harvey, 1973, 1999 [1982]).
Marxism became central to much radical
geography, which moved from an oppositional
and relatively marginalized position to become
a major force. Radical ideas and practices
developed within feminist geographies,
similarly committed to social change but crit-
ical of thegender-blindness of other radical

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RADICAL GEOGRAPHY
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