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