Abstract
The dominant discourses of Anglo-American economic geography universalised certain particulars in ways that rendered as archetypal some things that were perhaps better treated as marginal, or at least locally specific. Simultaneously, those dominant discourses rendered as marginal, unimportant or absent, things that are central to economic geographies in a range of places. This commentary reflects on key elements of the foundations for a distinctive Antipodean contribution to wider debates in human geography and the value of such debate to other marginalised discourses in the discipline.
In what seems like another lifetime as an early career academic, I submitted a paper to Antipode that offered a first step into my journey into an engagement with relational approaches to geographical scale. The paper was unapologetically Antipodean, drawing on my engagement with Australian Indigenous geographies. It was also an early exploration of the challenges of writing and thinking at what was then an undeniable margin of the discipline. The paper was rejected rather unceremoniously (one very positive review; one very negative review asserting the greater value Neil Smith’s approach to scale (e.g. Smith, 1988a, 1988b; Smith and Dennis, 1987) and an editorial negative casting vote). The paper eventually found an Antipodean home (Howitt, 1993) and languished in the margins for a few years, while the ‘scale debate’ gained momentum in the Anglo-American nexus (including Antipode), and it was a paper in Area (Howitt, 1998) that finally gained some traction for my advocacy of a relational approach to scale.
For many geographers in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, this story reflects similar experiences in their own careers. The dominant discourses of Anglo-American economic geography universalised certain particulars in ways that rendered as archetypal some things that were perhaps better treated as marginal or at least locally specific. Simultaneously, those dominant discourses rendered as marginal, unimportant or absent, things that are central to economic geographies in a range of places. Working in, on and around the margins in a range of adjectival geographies, the dialogue initiated by Wray et al. (2013) echoes and extends many of the discussions that have shaped my own experiences of and contributions to theoretical, methodological and empirical issues in Antipodean geography.
In my own work, I’ve often drawn on the Antipodean image of the world turned upside down so beautifully rendered by songwriter Leon Rosselson in his succinct and inspiring account of the fate of The Diggers in the English Civil War (Rosselson, 2011). Indeed, my colleagues and I have advocated the value of reframing (temporally, spatially, conceptually and politically) as a critically important tool in shifting understanding of key issues (Suchet-Pearson and Howitt, 2006). So the prospect of a Dialogue on Antipodean reflections and experiences in the discipline excites me, as has Connell’s proposition in Southern Theory (Connell, 2007). In Connell’s view, Anglo-American theorising in particular and ‘western’ and Euro-centric theorising in general, risk imposing a ‘grand erasure … of the experience of the majority of human kind from the foundations of social thought’ (p. 46).
There has long been an awkward positioning of key North American (particularly, but not exclusively Los Angeles and New York) and British (particularly southeast English) locations as somehow archetypal while other places were reduced to interesting case study status. That rankled for an aspiring young Australian geographer. I read Doreen Massey (1984) and understood that geography did matter – but it has often seemed that the hidden message of the dominant discourse was that some geographies matter more than others!
Yet, the brilliant work of Jane Jacobs reminded us that spatial edges are not always what – or where – they seem. In Edge of Empire (1996), she turned things upside down and pointed out that without the Antipodean (and other colonial) edges of empire, Britain would be a different place. And Massey (1993, 2005) noted how those edges had become embedded in the imagined centre of empire in post-modern London – and how edges have become central in the power geometries and the complexly scaled geographies of the 21st century.
Yet, somehow much of the Anglo-American axis (woven at least partly of powerful funding agencies, publishing interests, text book markets and geographies of privilege) has continued to deal with the Antipodes – and other non-core or non-English-speaking areas – as more or less marginal as other; as ‘there’ rather than ‘here’; as ‘them’ rather than ‘us’. Personally, I’ve argued that there is some significance and value in working at the frontiers, borders and edges of the discipline and its fashions (Howitt, 2001), but there are also consequences (for all). The problem is that even when they noticed the Antipodes, northern theorists often simply get it wrong. In pursuing grand theory, the dominant Anglo-American axis in intellectual life has pursued a version of universalist representation that not only erases and marginalises the specificities of other places but often simply misunderstands even the basics of local circumstances – for example, even Antipodean rivers fail to comply with the theoretical constructions of metropolitan geographers (Taylor and Stokes, 2005)! As Dowling et al. put it: In some ways, the “larrikin culture” of these margins of European intellectual endeavour engaged with a range of underdogs that saw organised labour, colonised peoples, natural heritage and justice as the core business of publicly-funded intellectuals. (Dowling et al., in press)
The Antipodean geography community is small, close-knit and supportive. As Larner’s reflection recalls, a history of bi-national conferences and workshops, along with considerable cross-Tasman collaboration, has produced lasting relationships and a disciplinary community that can be deeply challenging, but is generally inclusive and generous. The risk is that this familiarity breeds the assumption that we know each other’s work in ways that postpone (or avoids) deeper reading. We often feel the need to reference the theoretical fashions of the Anglo-American discourse more carefully than the Antipodean discourses; we sign book contracts that require privileging of North American and European examples in order to publish our more ‘local’ research; we argue that journals like Geographical Research are no less (or more) international than similar journals published ‘in’ the centres of Anglo-American publishing.
The work of Katherine Gibson and the impressive body of scholarship around her and the much missed Julie Graham (e.g. Gibson-Graham, 1994, 1996, 2005; Gibson-Graham et al., 2000) demonstrates decisively that Australian economic geography not only has a pulse but also a brain, heart and wings. Larner in particular notes that the Australasian discourse has never been restricted to the region. They have drawn in and extended to the work, ideas and field locations of many others – within and beyond the academic networks of the discipline and its discourses. And from Aotearoa/New Zealand, Le Heron in various collaborations has pushed to extend the understanding of how globalisation in finance sectors interacts with neoliberalism in governance, and specific geographies of production, trade and consumption to provide not just a compelling analysis of the existing economic geographies but to open wider imaginaries of possible geographies. Joining with others such as O’Neill, McGuirk, Fagan and Webber, this body of work focuses on Australasian experience not as exceptional but as particular. It offers an important counterpoint to some dominant discourses. And Beer’s reflection reminds us that despite the rhetorical value of the theoretical debates, some of the responsibilities of the global academy remain local – the provision of local and national analysis for local purposes. Inevitably, local economic geographies, then, must respond to their local audiences and the broader global value of our disciplinary efforts is not just in advancing high-level global theories. It is also to be found in our capacity to frame, respond and support interventions at more local scales in and in more concrete circumstances.
But, there is, as I suggested earlier, a dark side to this discussion to be considered. First, there are some notable absences in Wray et al.’s discussion. For example, there is little consideration given here to post-carbon economic geographies, despite their importance for regional futures. Neither is there much discussion of the interfaces between economic, environmental and cultural geographies in areas as diverse as climate change and adaptation, or of the changing institutional interfaces between human and non-human domains as they are mediated by governments, corporations and civil society. In my own fields of practice, for example, there is emerging work in Indigenous geographies that would suggest that Aotearoa’s Treaty of Waitangi and Australia’s Native title regime has an economic geography that warrants consideration both within and beyond Antipodean reflections (Coombes et al., 2012a, 2012b). Such issues continue to enliven Australasian economic (and cultural and environmental and other adjectival geographies) and provide a foundation for a distinctive Antipodean contribution to wider debates. I can but thank my colleagues for their reflections, and encourage others to read more widely across the geographies of the margins – whether Antipodean or not – with a view to broadening our discourse and decentring the discourses of the Anglo-American centre.