The Dictionary of Human Geography

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immense superstructure, its institutions and

forms of consciousness. In illustrating this the-

ory of contradiction and change, Marx refers

variously to the ancient, Asiatic, feudal and

capitalistmodes of production.

The theory outlined in the 1859 Preface

appears disarmingly simple, and has tended

to be downplayed by Marxists who find it too

close to a form of economic, or even techno-

logical, determinism. Nevertheless, Cohen

(1978) has shown how it can be given a rigor-

ous and sophisticated modern defence if one is

prepared to accept the validity of functionalist

forms of explanation (seefunctionalism).

Wright, Levine and Sober (1992) have also

shown how the basic argument for economic

primacy can be disaggregated into at least six

linked sub-theses, not all of which are asserted

with equal force in Marx’s many writings, and

some of which are more defensible than

others. It is thus possible to extract both

‘strong’ and ‘weak’ versions of historical

materialism from Marx’s writings, with the

latter placing more emphasis on the role of

class conflict in social change, the role of the

superstructure in shaping and reacting back

on the economic base, and the role of contin-

gent factors in opening up different historical

trajectories.

Adding a spatial dimension to historical ma-

terialism brings further complexities. Giddens,

for example, attempted to purge historical

materialism of any evolutionary, functionalist,

or reductionist tendencies, and hisstructura-

tion theory incorporated spatial concepts

such as ‘time–space edges’ andtime–space

distanciationinto what he described as a

weaker ‘anti-evolutionary, episodic model of

social change’ (Giddens, 1981). However,

the work of geographer David Harvey repre-

sents the most sustained and systematic

attempt to incorporate space into a more gen-

eral ‘historical–geographical materialism’ (see,

centrally, Harvey, 1999 [1982]; also Castree

and Gregory, 2006), and his study of nine-

teenth-century Paris demonstrates what can

be achieved if such a framework is used subtly

and flexibly as a guiding thread for research

(Harvey, 2003a). kb

Suggested reading

Bassett (2005); Shaw (1978).

historicism Historicism has two meanings:

(i) intellectual traditions that assume human

history to have an inner logic, overall design or

direction (a ‘telos’); and (ii) critical traditions

that insist on the importance of specific

historical contexts to the interpretation of

cultural texts and practices.

Historicism in the first sense invokes trans-

historical forces to structure its explanations

of human ‘progress’ (most visibly in the move-

ment of the world-spirit, orGeist, in G.W.F.

Hegel’s philosophical history). The appeal of

teleology– of ‘unfolding’ models of social

change – is now much diminished, and few

scholars would see human history as predict-

able and susceptible to the formulation of

universal scientific laws. When Karl Popper

famously railed against the ‘poverty of histori-

cism’ in this sense, he had a reading of

Marxism as economic determinism in his

sights, but subsequent versions ofhistorical

materialismhave offered a much more open-

ended view of human history and the spaces

for political action (Popper, 1960 [1945]).

The second sense of historicism is much

more important to contemporary social en-

quiry. Historical context and historical specifi-

city are articles of faith in historical

geography, and while they were undermined

byspatial sciencein the 1960s and 1970s, the

emergence of a cultural–historical geography

with a critical edge brought a closer, if largely

tacit, engagement with a so-called ‘New Histori-

cism’–anapproachtoliteraryandculturalstud-

ies that originated in the USA in the 1980s

(Gallagher and Greenblatt, 2001). Among the

sources on which it draws, threeare particularly

important for human geography:

(1) thethick descriptionof anthropologist

Clifford Geertz, which underwrites the

importance of a close reading of minor

events in such a way that they reveal the

larger situations of which they are a part

and to which they can be made to speak;

(2) thegenealogyof philosopher–historian

Michel Foucault, which resists ‘power’s

descriptions of itself’ by looking to the

margins and the peripheries of situations;

and

(3) the cultural materialismof cultural

critic Raymond William, which empha-

sizes the materiality of cultural formations

and their contradictory constitution.

New Historicism has influenced studies of co-

lonialdiscourseinpost-colonialismand has

much in common with work in cultural

geography and the ‘contextual approach’

to the history of geography (seegeography,

history of). It should be noted that when

Soja (1989, 1996b) objects to ‘historicism’, he

has in mind an over-valuation of historical

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HISTORICISM