I went looking for any radical academic thought that arose out of this element of our "American experience" and found the article "Revolutionary and Counter-Revolutionary Theory in Geography and the Problem of Ghetto Formation” (David Harvey, 1973). A great excerpt got me thinking again about the constant battle between the relative utilities of academics and activism, and the plausibility of forging a middle-way:
A revolutionary approach to theory… does not entail yet another empirical investigation of the social conditions in the ghettos. In fact, mapping even more evidence of man’s patent inhumanity to man is counter-revolutionary in the sense that it allows the bleeding-heart liberal in us to pretend we are contributing to a solution when in fact we are not. This kind of empiricism is irrelevant. There is already enough information in congressional reports, newspapers, books, articles and so on to provide us with all the evidence we need….
This immediate task is nothing more nor less than a self-conscious and aware construction of a new paradigm for social geographic thought through a deep and profound critique of our existing analytical constructs. This is what we are best equipped to do. We are academics, after all, working with the tools of the academic trade. As such, our task is to mobilize our powers of thought to formulate concepts and categories, theories and arguments, which we can apply to the task of bringing about a humanizing social change. These concepts and categories cannot be formulated in abstraction. They must be forged realistically with respect to the events and actions as they unfold around us. Empirical evidence, the already assembled dossiers, and the experiences gained in the community can and must be used here. But all of those experiences and all of that information means little unless we synthesize it into powerful patterns of thought.
Chalk one up in the academic column, but add a dis for hyper-empiricist research. I like this guy. And while he is raising the flag for radical geographic thought, it could just as easily be any social science.
Posts
3 comments:
Isn't the "radical" in "radical geography" a bit superfluous?
I like his sentiment sans the ideological bent, but I wouldn't go so far to say that the point of academics is to engender change. That's a personal decision to be made by the academic, really. And there's a lot to be said for disinterested observation.
Fair enough, I think the point of academics, more than any other profession, is completely neutral. At least with almost any other profession you can easily say, for example, the point of construction is to build things.
It's up to the individual academic what meaning they give tot heir role and what they produce. I think the author is addressing those academics who have already accepted some sort of "improving the human condition" (in this case ghettos) as one of their motivations. For people driven by a particular personal or moral imperative, I think there is not much to say for disinterested observation at all.
Post a Comment