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intellectual development of socialist
approaches to geography (through the Union
of Socialist Geographers (started in 1974),
Antipode, the Socialist Specialty Group in the
Association of American Geographers, and
the International Critical Geography
Conference) (see Dear, 1975). At the centre
of many of these developments in geography
has been the towering figure of David Harvey.
Since the 1970s, Harvey has systematically
argued for the importance of thegeograph-
ical imaginationfor understanding capital-
ism and socialist (Marxist) critique. From the
1990s, he increasingly extended these efforts
beyond geography through his writing and
speaking engagements with the Socialist
Register,New Left Review,Monthly Reviewand
the Brecht Forum, among many others
(Castree, 2007). jpisociety A widely used term whose meaning
remains frustratingly vague, but that descri-
bes the organization of human beings into
forms that transcend the individual person,
bringing them into relations with one another
that possess some measure of coherence,
stability and, indeed, identifiable ‘reality’.
The one-time UK Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher infamously declared ‘there is no
such thing as society’, offering a populist
version of a position in social science known
asmethodological individualism(Werlen,
1993 [1988], pp. 40–52) that ultimately
lodges all social enquiry in the attitudes, goals,
decisions and behaviours of individual
human actors. Even within critical strands of
social theory/social science, however, the
notion of society remains curiously taken-for-
granted, under-theorized and even an embar-
rassing guest that certain perspectives within
the contemporary theoretical landscape – vari-
ous forms ofpost-structuralism, for instance,
oractor-network theory(ant)andnon-
representational theory(nrt)–mightwish
had never arrived.
Many concepts of society set it apart from
economy, politics andculture, such that it
(or something called ‘the social’) becomes a
distinctive ‘level’ for analysis, apparently made
of ontologically different stuff, with questions
prompted about whether it exists in relations
of influencing, co-influencing or being influ-
enced by these other levels. More specifically,
notions such ascivil societyhave been devel-
oped to distinguish a sphere of human concern
and activity that cannot be reduced to either
the dynamics of economic production or the
machinations of the state (Urry, 1981),although debate then rages about whether a
‘capital-logic’ or ‘state-centric’ account of civil
society is more appropriate (a question that
arguably can only be answered by researching
particular forms of [civil] society found in par-
ticular times and places). Alternatively, many
social theories tackling what Giddens (1984)
terms ‘the constitution of society’ discuss how
dimensions of the economic, the political and
the cultural all bolt together to create society,
wherein society appears as the product, articu-
lation or condensation of all of these dimen-
sions rather than as something somehow
separate (and separable) in its own right.
Inevitably, though, different social theories
suppose differing balances between these con-
stitutive dimensions of society, with some
leaning towards economic determinism and
others towards what might be called political
or cultural determinism. Other perspectives,
meanwhile, query the very construct of ‘soci-
ety’, regarding it as at best a name for a loose
assemblage of objects – people, to be sure, but
also diversenon-human actors (books, bullets,
newspapers, telephones, hospitals, streets etc.)- that have to be constantly enlisted by people
in practices that produce, sustain and render
with some semblance of ‘reality’ a patterning
that can be understood and re-presented (to
others) as ‘society’. Although proceeding with
different (post-structuralist and practice-
attuned) theoretical tools, Thrift (1996,
pp. 30–5) draws out the implications of
Copjec’s (1994, pp. 8–9) psychoanalytically
informed insistence that ‘society neverstops
realising itself, that itcontinuesto be formed
over time’, a claim rebounding in various ways
on the staticontologiesandepistemologies
inherent to many conceptualizations of society.
Thrift (1996, p. 56), reflecting upon his early
borrowings from Giddens’ social ontology,
still finds things here to praise but concludes
that ‘one cannot fill out all of a society in the
way Giddens sometimes. .. seems intent on
doing’. This being said, through hisstruc-
turation theory, Giddens has arguably done
more than most to dissect the different elem-
ents that many writers, geographers included,
continue to take as indispensable for any
account of something called ‘society’. The
elements here include: theagencyofindividuals,
socialized into certain habits of thought,
conduct and action, if always possessing the
capacity to think and do things differently;insti-
tutions,entailing formal entities with written
constitutions,regulations, memberships and
so on (e.g. schools, firms, clubs) as well as
informal but enduring entities such as family
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