Environment and Planning 0: Society and Space, 1993, volumo 11, pngoo 303-322
Public space and the public sphere: political theory
and the historical geography of modernity
P Howoli
Deportment of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge CB2 36N, England
Received 11 December 1992; in revised form 24 February 1993
Abstract This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion of the historical geography of
modernity. It is argued that the exclusive focus on social theory has detrimental effects'on
the appreciation of normative political concerns and that it ignores the resurgence of normative
political theory. Habcrmns's concept of the public sphere, and its place within his theoretical
and empirical studies, is, by contrast, commendably concerned with linking the social and
historical work with normative political theorising, and its usefulness for geographical
investigation is applauded. However, the criticisms directed from, in particular, communitarian
political theorists and contexlualist social researchers would seem to make his attempt to
bring a 'strong' theory of public political life back within the remit of a reconstructed social
theory less plausible. One set of responses to this criticism comes in the form of the attempt
to build geography into this normative political theory, turning public spheres into public
spaces; Arcndt's political theory, in conclusion, is thus held to be a significant contribution to
the historical geography of modernity.
1 Introduction
Thinking historically is no longer seen as a luxury for human geographers; "on the
contrary, it is an essential part of doing human geography1*, and demanded by many
of the debates which lie at the heart of the discipline (Driver, 1988, page 504).
Arguments about the role of historical understanding turn out to be arguments
about the nature of geography itself, about its substantive contemporary concerns,
and at the same time its theoretical foundations. For, although there may be some
residual ambiguity in the claim that history must be 'brought back in' to human
geography (Driver, 1988), we can at least say with some confidence that historical
understanding must serve a much wider role within geography than it has done: it
should be seen neither as some sort of rebuke to overenthusiastic theoreticians nor
in its turn dispatched to some specialised, and relatively unvisited, province of its
own, distinct from contemporary studies. Rather, the call for historical understanding
seems to implicate both theoretical debate and themes in contemporary research.
And for this reason, some sort of historical geography of the present (to nod to
Foucault and to Febvre) would thus seem to be doubly significant, with the 'call to
history' finding an echo in the call for the investigation of the historical geography of
modernity. In this project, common historical concerns unite pressing contemporary
and theoretical debates, with "the mapping of human geography into social theory"
demanding 'interventions' in the historical geography of modernity (Gregory, 1991,
page 17).
That the historical geography of modernity would seem to be firmly on the agenda
of a critical human geography, certainly of one which finds the division between
historical and contemporary geographers difficult to sustain (see Driver, 1988), is
readily apparent. The actual business of intervening in the historical geography of
modernity, however, is not a straightforward task, and there are problems with obeying
this otherwise laudable clarion call. The first (and more parochial) is simply the
difficulty of reconciling the proponents of historical understanding and the proponents
304
P Howell
of theoretical understanding. To write the historical geography of modernity
—something which has yet to be accomplished, as Gregory (1990, page 229) reminds
us—requires, ineluctably, a confrontation with theory. We simply do not, as Gregory
goes on to say, have very much of a choice about this, for all that we might sympathise
with Taylor's observation that "There has never been an age so theory-drenched as
ours" (Taylor, 1985a, pages 105-106). It might well be, as this implies, that there
is an elective affinity between modernity and theory, but the need for theory is
then that much stronger: "empirical enquiries that are not theoretically informed
and deliberately, consciously so, and which do not in turn feed back into wider
debates, will be unable to contribute very much to the construction of those 'grand
maps of history' which are vitally necessary to any critical understanding of modernity"
(Gregory, 1990, page 229). If we are to understand the geography of modernity,
then, thinking historically in itself will not be enough; it will be necessary to think
theoretically at the same time.
There is a rather less apparent, but just as significant, problem though: given
that we need theory in order to understand the historical geography of modernity,
what kind of theory is it that we need? I am aware that this sounds more than a
little pedantic, but then theory does not come to us as a uniform software package
readily installed in order to facilitate research. Theory itself is, inevitably, an
'intervention' or a practice which is itself contestable and full of difficulty (Gregory,
1991; Taylor, 1985a). Furthermore, whether one is for or against, one has to
acknowledge 'theory' has precious little homogeneity; and if there is ambiguity
concerning the ways in which the historical is conceived within human geography
(Driver, 1988, page 498), we should note that the same could be said about how
the 'theoretical' can be conceived. There are different versions of theory, not all of
which are complementary nor even compatible. What I want to argue in this paper
follows from this: that the investigation of modernity's geography requires not merely
the happy reconciliation of historical and theoretical virtues; it also demands the
willingness to move beyond conventional notions of social and geographical theory.
And specifically, I argue that the historical geography of modernity needs to address
directly questions of normative, political theory; questions which much conventional
social theory is not well placed to answer. Looking towards these, rather less
familiar, theoretical horizons, we might discover other historical geographies of
modernity.
2 Politics, theory, and modernity
With this in mind, I want to take as a starting point Gregory's observation that,
however essential to us, social theory cannot be our panacea: "social theory is not
a Noah's Ark", he writes, "that can magically save human geography (or any other
discipline) from the floodwaters. Or at any rate, if it is, then its hull is so riddled
with woodworm that major reconstruction is necessary to keep it afloat" (1991,
page 19). In itself, of course, the comment that social theory needs reconstruction
is something of a perennial complaint, though no less valid for that; what I want to
do, however, is to emphasise the word social here (over and above Gregory's
intended point), because I want to make something of the contrast between social
theory and political philosophy, which is to say, normative political theory. I want
to argue that we should recognize that social theory is indeed a necessary, but not
a sufficient, requirement for any historical geography of modernity, and that we
should take more seriously the revival of modern normative political theory in our
own deliberations. In other words, a narrowly conceived social theory, a theory of
society, is not the only choice open to us: there is a theory of politics that may be
Public npnco and tho public sphere
30B
as important, if not more important, for the writing of any historical geography of
modernity,0*
I do not want to imply that geography has been unconcerned with political
theories, of course, From Harvey's (1973) use of Rawlsian ideas of justice, through
to the present-day concern with thinkers such as Foucault and Hataermas (for
example, Driver, 1985; Gregory, 1989; Philo, 1992), and with feminist theory in
particular, geographers have indeed grappled with political theories; but I would
contend that the specifically political and normative reflection contained in their
ideas has tended to be obscured by the use to which these are put, which is to say,
as part of a generic social theory to which we as geographers appeal almost
exclusively for validation, To take one example, justice, a political conception, has
interested geographers largely—and famously—in the form of social justice (Harvey,
1973),(2> To take another example, it is notable how Foucault has been incorporated
in works such as Soja's Postmodern Geographies (1989) as part of a rcasscrtion of
space in social thought (no one it seems, as yet, is much interested in his work on
ethics). And yet again, Habermas's work on system and lifeworkl has had much
greater currency than his attempts to integrate a political philosophy into his social
theory (for example, sec Gregory, 1989). Indeed it is only perhaps in feminist
geographical thought that a broadly political theory has retained any sort of parity
with social thinking,<3> We have then, oddly enough, little in the way of any sort of
political theory with which to examine our research. This is doubly striking, I contend,
when it comes to thinking about the theory and the historical geography of
modernity.
<nLasIctt pronounced the death of political philosophy in 1956, but logical positivism, which
was supposed to have made it untenable, has itself shuffled off the academic coil (Plant,
1991a, pages 1-20). It is the work of Rawls that has been most significant in reviving political
theory, and indeed in generating the vocabulary, concepts, and distinctions of modern political
discourse, but if A Theory of Justice (Rawls, 1971) was the proximate cause, it might be felt
that others deserve as much credit. If "political theory and the politics of democracy share a
profound and provoking kinship" (Barber, 1988, page 21), the course of world events may be
as important as cpistemological ones, such as the reaction against positivism.
<2> It might be argued that, because Harvey moves away from liberal formulations1 to Marxist
ones in the course of this volume and of the thinking behind it, that he necessarily moves
away from the classic deontological basis of liberal political philosophy—in notions of justice
—towards conceptions that share the Marxist concern to go 'beyond justice' (see Kymlicka,
1989, pages 100-131). And whatever the internal tensions in Social Justice and the City,
geographers have, of course, been fascinated as much by the city as by social justice. It is
hardly surprising that a concern with moral and political justice has not been a very visible
legacy of the book. The important discussion in Rogers (1992) of Walzer and Young, goes
some way to counter this criticism, however, by introducing the geography of social and
political communities into theories of justice.
(3)
It is, of course, a major argument of feminism that the social and the political realms are
extraordinarily difficult to disentangle. One of the reasons feminist thought has retained a
concern with political theory stems from this. However well taken this argument is, I take
this itself to be a political distinction, so that, however difficult indeed it is to disentangle the
social and the political substantively, it is possible to critique social theory from the standpoint
of a feminist political theory. For an interesting series of debates, the (friendly) disagreements
between Benhabib and Fraser are instructive (see Benhabib, 1992a; Fraser, 1989a). Other
useful contributions include work by Goodman (1992) and Young (1987). Jardine's (1985)
book remains an outstanding discussion of gender and modernity. I realise that there is' not
the space to do justice to feminist critiques of political theory and of the concept of the
public sphere here, but I do find myself wholeheartedly in agreement with Phillips's (1991)
very impressive attempt to reconcile the competing arguments: her defence of public political
life from within a feminist critique is exemplary.
306
P Howell
Before I come, however, to the sort of political theory that I think is relevant to
writing the historical geography of modernity, I ought to say a little more about the
argument against a narrowly defined social theory. It might be felt, for instance,
that the distinction between social and political theories is, at anything but the
most abstruse level, somewhat meaningless. There are, in fact, however, a number
of reasons for questioning the exclusiveness of social theory in our theoretical
armoury (and I can only touch upon some of them here).(4) What I will do is argue
that it is social theory's lack of a convincing political theory that constitutes its
greatest weakness when it comes to writing about 'modernity'. Once again, this is
not the same as arguing that theory is insufficiently politicized, or recognized as
politically charged: it is certainly true that the 'crisis of representation' ushered in
as part of postmodernism's discontents has brought the politics of social theory to the
fore, hut this amounts to much more than the pallid acceptance that social theory
simply cannot avoid political questions. What it does indicate is that social theory
and politics have a troubled and troubling relationship with each other; if theories
can be said to 'travel', that does not mean that separate discourses necessarily travel
well with each other. Social theory and political philosophy are distinct traditions,
not always necessarily competing ones, but not necessarily complementary either.
Reifying social theory as part of 'social science', with its claims to 'scientificity', is
indeed to set the two traditions at loggerheads: so that to say that "a boundary of
the 'social' has always been provided by 'politics'" is to argue for no less than that
"the attempt to do 'social science' must imply a denial of the centrality of the
political domain", and with it too the denial of a specifically political theory (Lassman,
1989, page 5). The problem is outlined by Lassman:
"The claim to present a picture of society that aspires to the status of a scientific
theory must mean that no area of social life is immune from its explanatory
claims ... [0]n this account, the realm of politics and of the political must be as
amenable to social scientific explanation as is any other area of human affairs.
The assumption that is being made here is that the 'political' simply is a constituent
part, or in modern terms, a subsystem, of something called 'society'. This is the
fundamental assumption of practically all modern social science and this includes
much of what is called 'political science' too. There is a fundamental conflict of
interpretation here between the language of political philosophy, the language of
the pollsy and the language of 'society' conceived as an order that encompasses the
political sphere" (1989, pages 1-2).
In other words, the social theory that underwrites this particular sociological project
lays exclusive claim to what it renders as the 'scientific' study of politics; as Unger
has argued, "much of social science has been built as a citadel against metaphysics
and politics" (1976, pages 2 6 6 - 2 6 7 ; see also 1975; 1987). Politics, subordinate to
the theory of society, could thus hardly lay claim to a theoretical territory of its
own; briefly put, the imperialism of social science has largely acted to eclipse
political philosophy.
Further, the correlate of this social scientific conception of modernity is an
implicit claim that the "rise of the social", this "new landscape [that] has arisen up
(4>For some of that critique, see Dallmayr (1984), Forester (1985), Haan et al (1983), Keat
(1981), Lash and Urry (1986), Lassman (1989), Sabia and Wallulis (1983), Wardell and Turner
(1986a); also, see Sartori (1973). These references do not add up to a single critique, though
they share similar dissatisfactions: some regard, as I do, social theory and political philosophy
as far from complementary, and argue for no more than an awareness of the distinction between
the IVYD; others object to social theory rather more forcefully, though very often this is more of
an objection to a particular kind of social science rather than to social theory in general. A
useful comparison of two recent works on modernity would be of Luke (1990) with Poole (1991).
Public npaco md tho public sphoro
307
around us" as Deleu/e (1979, page ix) has it, acknowledges a corresponding failure
of any autonomous political realm, The dismissal of political philosophy is thus
paralleled by the inability to countenance the existence of an autonomous political
sphere, under conditions of modernity, Indeed, modernity might then be said to be
defined by "the conquest of polities'* (Barber, 1988). Such a claim Ls, I think, written
into the constitution of modern social science: the great founders of modern social
theory, for instance, all partake of something like this conception of modernity (see
Wardcll and Turner, 1986b); on Marxism's conception of politics, see, amongst
others, Pierson, 1989; and on Durkheim, see Lukes, 1975. Of these, however, it is
perhaps Weber who can be thought of as emblematic. The notion of an historical
rise of the social realm has clear affinities with the notion of bureaucratization, and
the corresponding disenchantment of the world, read as depotiticizutiony eliminates
political theory at the same time as it insists that only social science can comprehend
what modernity really is about (Keane, 1984).<5> Weber thus explicitly rejects the
relevance of a normative political philosophy for a disenchanted and dcpoliticized
modern world.
To recap: there is a strong argument to be made that the conception of modernity
promoted by the social sciences has contributed to the denigration of politics, both
by insisting that the modern age is structurally antagonistic to the possibility of an
autonomous political realm, and by claiming that only social theory—as opposed to
a seemingly anachronistic political philosophy—may comprehend modernity. Now I
realise that this severely compressed argument has been accorded scant justice
here, but if some sort of a link like this between social science, social theory, and
modernity is accepted—if the decline in political philosophy is connected to a
particular and powerful conception of modernity—it will be seen to raise a number
of difficulties. We do not have to go so far as to argue as some have done that it
is this very inability to formulate a coherent political theory that is the meaning of
social science (Wolin, 1981); nor do we have to rehearse the debates over positivism,
historicism, and objectivity in order to suggest that this denial of political theory is
increasingly difficult to justify.(6) That this is evident might be gauged from many
debates that have disturbed the hegemony of social theory in recent years: Marxism's
ambiguous relation to moral considerations, for instance (Lukes, 1985); the
methodological and philosophical investigations of action, rationality, and agency (for
an overview, see Carling, 1986); the arguments over the "dissolution of the social"
and the challenges to the entire sociological project itself (Wardell and Turner,
1986a) or even the place of politics in complementary disciplines such as social
history (Eley, 1990; Eley and Nield, 1980; Mayfield and Thorne, 1992). In all
these areas, and beyond, it is the lack of a convincing political and normative
theory that is a cause for concern. Along with it, of course, goes social science's
seemingly unremitting opposition to the idea that an autonomous and viable sphere
of political action could survive in modern times. This too seems challengeable.
(5) Weber's position is, of course, highly ambiguous (see Lassman, 1 9 8 6 , pages 6 7 - 6 8 ; 1989,
pages 3 - 4 ; Wardell and Turner, 1 9 8 6 b , page 14). Weber characterises politics as irrational,
contrast this to the very different, and much more complex, picture presented by Scaff (1989).
(6)
Note that it is often argued that sociology arose in opposition to the atomism, empiricism,
and individualism of liberal political theory, which might mean that there is a methodological
reason to refuse and refute political philosophy in general. There are two responses to this,
however, which militate against this conclusion: the first is simply that other forms of political
theory—such as communitarianism (see below)—avoid this failing of liberalism (see Taylor,
1985b); the second is to deny that liberalism justifies this impoverished characterization (see
Kymlicka, 1989).
308
P Howell
What is at stake is a conception of the political that goes beyond the workings of
government and of the state, that is, beyond that of a subsystem of society;
beyond, in Barber's words,
"a demeaning portrait of the human being as an abstract monad and as homo
economicus: man as beast, as interest-monger, as disinterested agent or grasping
consumer, as hostile competitor and predatory aggressor .... [beyond] a 'thin'
rather than strong versions of political life in which citizens are spectators and
clients while politicians are professionals who do the actual governing—in other
wards, an understanding of democracy not as collective self-government but as
the rule of elites who are periodically legitimized by elections" (1988, page 18).
This absence of a distinct sense of the political applies to geography, I think, as it
applies across the social sciences as a whole—perhaps even more so as geography has
(all too) often insisted that the social and the spatial are virtually synonymous (see
Gregory and Urry, 1985). These challenges to what we could call unreconstructed
social theory leave geography in a somewhat difficult position: for if social theory
and social science are called into question, what theoretical foundations can we
ourselves lay for the understanding of modernity? What theoretical options are
open to us when it comes to writing the historical geography of modernity? Is
there, in particular, a 'strong' normative theory of politics that might illuminate that
historical geography?(7)
3 Habermas and the 'public sphere9
There is one obvious candidate for a theory of modernity that takes a normative
conception of politics seriously, which avoids a narrowly defined notion of the
social, and which is, furthermore, extraordinarily relevant to the historical geography
of modernity. It is Habermas's signal achievement to conform to critical theory's
avowed ambition to situate itself between practical philosophy and social science
(Benhabib, 1986, pages 2 - 3 ) , whilst at the same time avoiding that tradition's
debilitating cultural pessimism (derivative ultimately from Weber) about the prospects
for politics in the modern age. What Habermas is able to do, in the course of a
convoluted but consistent intellectual journey, is to salvage a normative theory of
politics under modern conditions, without blunting the force of critical theory's
assault on modernity. Habermas demonstrates the need for a critical social theory
that is built upon the foundations of politics and a normative political philosophy.
He does this by insisting on a distinction between societal modernization and
modernity itself, enabling him to conceptualize modernity in a way "which neither
overplays its costs, nor uncritically celebrates it the way mainstream social science
has done" (White, 1988, page 91). Habermas insists that, although the costs of
modernization are well appreciated (after Weber; Horkheimer and Adorno; et al),
nevertheless modernity also entails certain critical benefits: "By identifying modern
consciousness and a rationalized lifeworld as generating an enhancement of learning
capacity, Habermas stresses the enabling aspects of these structural phenomena for
human action" (White, 1988, page 103). The universal, rational potential of
cultural modernity, set against the costs of societal modernization, is contained in
the normative vision, the counterfactually projected possibility of political action
which is itself ushered in by modernity. A normative theory of politics not only,
then, survives but is in fact produced by modernity, in the form of what Habermas
conceptualizes as the 'public sphere'.
(7)
See also the important and parallel argument that the normative has been marginalised
(Gregory, 1989, pages 348-390).
Public apnco and tho public nphoro
309
In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere Habermas (1989) sets out
this statement of the political possibilities of modernity. The concept of the public
sphere, the bearer of these possibilities, is both a normative ideal of political action,
and an historical phenomenon. Indeed, in this early work, Hahcrmas, although he
later made very abstract attempts to rescue a universalist philosophy in the form of
the theory of communicative action and the universal pragmatics, is predominantly
concerned with a conception of a realm of critical-rational publicity that is, at
heart, historical and contextual. The public sphere is "a sphere which mediates
between society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer of
public opinion" (Eley, 1992, page 290), and as such it can be traced historically
and geographically to the transformations occurring in Western Europe in the late
18th century. It has its origins in the 18th-century ideals of citizenship and of a
wider, informed, and educated public, of representative and participatory government,
and above all in the new forms of political action that these enshrined (table 1).
Historically, then, the public sphere is particular and specific to a time and a
place, and also to certain social transformations. It is linked to the demand for
political reform, principally on the part of an emergent but increasingly selfconfident bourgeoisie, and it depended on and presumed "the prior transformation
of social relations, their condensation into new institutional arrangements and the
generation of new social, cultural and political discourse around this changing
environment" (Eley, 1990, page 14).
Although the public sphere can be traced historically, it is conceptualized by
Habermas simultaneously as a normative ideal of popular, participatory political
action, and as such it has a universality and a communicative rationality that is not
exhausted by the particular historical context in which it emerged (nor is its study
subsumed under a corresponding social history and theory). Rather, the public
sphere is to be considered a normative political model as well as a social and
historical phenomenon. By tracing the rise and fall of this critical-rational publicity,
an ideal of genuine political participation which would act as an authoritative basis
for political action, Habermas is able to formulate a normative conception of
politics combined with an historical and contextual argument about the growth of
public political action in the modern age. What he can do, therefore, is to argue
that, despite the birth of the public sphere to bourgeois parents, and despite,
furthermore, the detrimental effect of late capitalism's social horizon, there is
nevertheless a cumulative political gain, at the level of an ideal of critical-rational
debate. [On Habermas's own political interventions, see Holub (1991); and see the
essays collected in Forester (1985) for the relevance of the theory of communicative
action for political debates concerning (amongst others) ecology, education, information,
planning, and public policy.]
Table 1. Habermas's social realms in the making of the public sphere (sources: Habermas,
1989, page 39; additional emphasis by Goodman, 1992).
Private realm
Civil society (realm of
commodity exchange and
social labour)
Conjugal family's internal
space (bourgeois intellectuals)
Sphere of public authority
Public sphere in the political
realm
Public sphere in the world of
letters (clubs, press)
Market of culture products
('town')
State (realm of the 'police')
Court (courtly, noble society)
310
P Howell
Once again, I would emphasise that what this is not is simply a social theory of
modernity: Habermas's concept of the public sphere is a political theory too, because
it recommends a normative conception of public discourse that can, potentially,
serve as a foundation for a genuinely political society. Without the normative
political possibilities, the social and historical framework would be massively
impoverished. It is striking, of course, how far this early—and very contextual and
historical—work foreshadows his later theoretical abstractions. The essential
continuity in Habermas's project is obvious: the normative model of communicative
action as a basis for political legitimacy is directly related to this conception of the
public sphere. It shows Habermas looking to rescue the normative gains of modernity's
promotion of the public sphere from societal modernization's own degrading
influence upon it. Thus, he argues, the specific social context within which the
concept of public opinion and debate arose notwithstanding, the normative ideal
represented by the public sphere may be usefully retained. It can be argued, for
example, that the public sphere's ideal of critical-rational debate can be seen
helpfully to foreground the specificity of the actual, bourgeois, public sphere's
gender and class interests. In this way, Habermas's political theory of modernity
promotes a normative ideal relatable to, but separate from, his social theory.
True, furthermore, to his belief that it is only research that can prove the
persuasiveness of theory, Habermas's ideas about the public sphere do prove to be
empirically fruitful as well as theoretically consistent (White, 1988, pages 4 - 5 ) .
They have certainly been of interest to historians, and to historical and political
sociologists, amongst others (Calhoun, 1992). There is also plenty, though, to
interest historical geographers of modernity. For instance, Habermas argues that it
was the dissolution of the feudal order by long-distance commerce that played the
key role in instituting the changes that produced the public sphere, and that it is
the growth of an urban culture—of meeting houses, concert halls, opera houses,
press and publishing ventures, coffee houses, taverns and clubs, and the l i k e together with the growth and spread of the ethos and practice of local government
and the local state, which represents the expansion of the public sphere. Much of
what Habermas argues in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere can be
taken thus to be of quite fundamental interest, some of which will be familiar,
some contestable, but always stimulating. Despite the abstraction of his later work,
Habermas has always proclaimed his concern that concrete empirical research
should follow from and participate in theory construction, and it is certainly possible
with the concept of the public sphere to outline or reconstruct a research program
from it. Eley writes,
"The breaking down of parochial identities and the entry of rural societies into
national political cultures, or the nationalization of the peasantry ... is in one
dimension the creation of local public spheres and their articulation with a
national cultural and political arena" (1992, page 296).
Elsewhere, he writes that the public sphere
"was linked to the growth of provincial urban culture as the novel arena for a
locally organized public life, to a new infrastructure of social communication
(including the press and other literary media, the rise of a reading public,
improved transportation and adapted centres of sociability like coffee houses,
taverns and clubs) and to a new universe of voluntary association" (1990, page 14).
These reference points seem to me to concern a great deal of what we have
done, what we do, and what we might do when it comes to thinking about
modernity's historical geography. So far so good. Habermas seems to fit the bill
for an. historical geography of modernity remarkably well. The concept of the
public sphere allows one to provide for a 'strong' theory of public political action
f ' u b i u . sp.'K <' .ifit! the- public
«.|iMf-r• •
ni
that goes some way towards incorporating the insights of normative political
philosophy into a theory of modernity, and this without displacing the necessary
concrete social, historical, and (surely) geographical research. A recognizably
robust conception of politics would seem to be reconcilable with a reconstructed
social theory. What Habermas gives us is something similar to what l.akatos calls
a 'negative heuristic", the core concepts of a research program, from which
hypotheses, interpretations, and explanations, a corresponding 'positive heuristic',
can be derived (see White. 1988, page 7). In the terms I have chosen to borrow
here, the "negative heuristic" would be a political and normative theory of modernity,
and the "positive heuristic" the empirical and social theoretical investigations
('social' being used here once again in a narrow sense).
However, there are well-known problems with Habermas's theory of modernity.
It hardly needs to be added that Habermas's vision of the public sphere is
remarkably constricted, at the level of the core theoretical constructions and in
terms of the sort of empirical investigations he envisages. Habermas is (particularly)
vulnerable to charges of cthnocentrism, sexism, and abstraction (Gregory, 1991,
pages 19-20). That the theory of the public sphere is thoroughly Eurocentric,
androcentric, and, notably, uncritical, is well appreciated (Fraser, 1989c; Werckmeister,
1989; Young, 1990), and, although the exegesis of Habermas's work goes on
apace, it has not been matched by a truly critical research program (virtually all
the historical work replicates Habermas's preoccupation with France, Germany, and
England, for example). It is not simply the case, however, that the 'positive heuristic'
remains undeveloped; for at the heart of the problem lies Habermas's insistence on
a universal, impartial, model of undistorted political discourse. It is this which seems
both to deny a gender-sensitive reading of the theory of the public sphere and to
explain the exclusive focus on the experience of the Western European nation-state.
By seeking to demonstrate the possibility of rational-critical political action, as a
universalist theory of communicative action, Habermas necessarily moves away from
the particular, the local, and the specific. This means that Habermas's critical theory
loses the perspective on its own origins that an historical and contextual critical
theory requires. It is hard not to sympathize with Werckmeister's (1989) portrayal
of Habermas as one of the bulwarks of 'citadel culture', a supposedly critical
theory rendered toothless and complacent. The normative hermeneutic that was
supposed to make possible a genuinely critical account of the public sphere's
contextual weaknesses here seems to have ultimately failed. The obvious blind
spots in Habermas's social investigations can be seen to be directly related to the
problems in the 'negative heuristic'—the universalism built into the core concept of
the public sphere seeming to refuse an effective engagement both with its own
history and geography, and with contemporary concerns. For instance, the ideal of
impartiality built into Habermas's theory in order to achieve a universal moral
dialogue, with its evacuation of all particular, nongenerahzable concerns, is ably
denied by feminist critics (for instance, by Young, 1990). The whole movement of
the universal theory seems, despite Habermas's protestations, to arch away from
recognizable contexts, real problems, and moral situations. And some of this is
apparent from within Habermas's own intellectual history: for in the movement
towards the theory of communicative action, we can note with Calhoun that
"Habermas ... turns away from historically specific grounding for democracy ...
toward reliance on a transhistorical capacity of human communication" (Calhoun,
1992, page 31, my emphasis). I hardly need to add that this transhistorical work
lacks an effective geography too; as Gregory (1989, page 357) has noted, Habermas
is all too often effectively silent about space. Not only is there a signal lack of
anything resembling a geographical imagination [no consideration of citizenship
312
P Howell
outside of the confines of the Western nation-state form, for example (and compare
Rogers, 1992, pages 522-523)] but in addition Habermas is at pains to rebut directly
anything that smacks of what he calls 'parochialism'. This avowed aversion to the
'parochial', to the particular, the partial, and the contingent is, in fact, to a greater
or lesser extent present even in his early work (Habermas has nothing to say, for
instance, about national differences between public spheres, nor about nationalism in
general for that matter) but in the later theory of communicative action it is rampant.
Habermas is inevitably caught up, then, in a whole series of related difficulties
that undermine the entire normative project. Criticism of his substantive failings is
matched by the critical flak that he has attracted from social and political theorists
for his attempt to rescue, with use of the notions of the public sphere and the
theory of communicative action, modernity's universalist version of rationality. As
White (1988, page 22) observes, "it is becoming increasingly clear that universalism
in moral and political philosophy is currently experiencing serious difficulties finding
a satisfactory form in which to defend itself. And the critique of Habermas's
universalism that perhaps most effectively challenges the core concepts of his
normative political theory comes most strongly from communitarians in political
philosophy, and, more broadly, contextualists of various persuasions in the human
sciences as a whole (White, 1988, pages 1 3 - 2 4 ; see also Benhabib, 1992b).(8) In
truth, this is an epistemological as well as a political problem, but its consequences
are clear enough; and they resound with especial clarity, I think, to geographical
ears. What all these forms of criticism insist is that normative political insight, on
the one hand, and meaningful social explanation, on the other, can only be derived
from an understanding of the situated context of specific communities; they reject
what they see as the atomism and individualism, the stripping away of all shared
interests, that characterises this kind of normative political theory. Habermas's
universalism, built on a counterfactual conception of the normative principles of
the public sphere, lacks both content and context, and can be seen to promote a
definition of the self that ignores its particular, specific, concrete embeddedness in
communal practices; and those practices can only be understood from an analysis
of their contexts. Now, there are rather different versions of this set of criticisms,
but the ultimate conclusion would seem to recommend an antifoundationalist
communitarian political theory, and a contextual social theory that proceeds only
through 'thick description', 'local knowledge', and so on—a Winchian or Geertzian
vision of social enquiry (see Geertz, 1973; 1983; Winch, 1958; 1972).
This might sound very welcome to a geographical audience, and there is indeed
much that might be said for the communitarian and the contextualist positions from
the point of view of the geographical imagination (though it might not be that difficult
to characterize communitarians and contextualists as part of Werckmeister's 'citadel
culture' too), but this would be at the cost of the 'quasi-Kantian' 'negative heuristic'
kernel of normative political theory that Habermas wants to define as the programmatic
'Hegelian-Marxist' 'positive heuristic' of social scientific research (White, 1988,
page 128). We might go further than this, for, in fact, the communitarian position
would seem logically to fold up into the contextualist social science that Habermas
<8) By the use of the term 'communitarians' it should not be inferred that a single school of
thought exists; as Kymlicka (1989) makes clear, a number of arguments stem from their
objections to liberal political theory. However, the work of Taylor, Walzer, Sandel, and
Maclntyre can be taken as representative; Rorty's rather different defence of liberalism also,
paradoxically, shares some of the communitarian argument. Habermas, because of his
commitment to deontological principles, is closer to the liberalism of Rawls, and the kind of
counterfactual social contract that Rawls proposes: so Habermas's universalism suffers from
the same kinds of criticism that bedevil liberal political theory (see Benhabib, 1992b).
Public spaco and tho public splumi
313
seems set against. If normative values are contingent upon particular communities,
as the communitarians insist, then investigation would seem inevitably to proceed
from the standpoint of straightforward contextual enterprise. Would not the
political theory of the sort that I have been advocating here, then, seem to be
bound to be subsumed by a social theory based on good empiricist precepts? If
this is so, what, then, would be left of a political theory of modernity, as distinct
from a broad social and historical investigation?
Pessimistically, it would seem that all that we have is, on the one hand, a social
theory which has nothing to say about normative political questions (and which is
indeed predicated on their avoidance), and, on the other hand, a political theory
whose only response to the critique of universalism is to make a virtue out of the
necessity of context-dependency, basking in 'local knowledge', but all the while
haunted by the spectre of relativism (see Plant, 1991b). Either way, there seems
little theoretical space for an historical geography of modernity able to comprehend
questions of normative political import. Once more the position is indeed rather
worse than it appears, for given that 'modernity' as a concept would seem to
demand some notion of transformation—some sort of marked normative and social
change—then communitarians and contextualists seem set fair to run up against a
brick wall (White, 1988, page 20). Contextualists are not, it will be appreciated,
best suited to spotting and interpreting periods of transition, nor arc communitarians
sensitive to changing norms. 'Modernity' (as distinct from societal modernization)
would thus seem to be fatally intractable to research. Culture, context, and
community—the great buzzwords—seem to have not only normative and political
theory but also the entire conception of modernity itself in something of a
stranglehold: there would seem to be little to suggest that a normative political
theory of modernity could ground research within its historical geography.
4 Arendt's historical geography of modernity
Clearly, if we wish to conceive of modernity as something more than societal
modernization, if we wish for the resource of a 'strong' theory of political action
and autonomy to set against classical social theory's inadequacies, then the very
serious difficulties surrounding normative analysis need first to be overcome.
Under the combined challenge of feminist, postmodern, communitarian, and,
indeed, plain empiricist objections, any attempt to set a universal normative
standard seems unlikely to continue to command support. As I have noted, an
insistent relativism seems to threaten the sort of combination of normative and
empirical investigation that Habermas has been pursuing. Without a normative
standard, the public sphere becomes no more than an historically and geographically
specific emergence, and one that is gender, class, and culturally specific at that.
I want, however, to argue that it is in fact possible to envisage an historical
geography of modernity something like that for which I have been arguing. I do
want to insist upon the relevance of Habermas's procedural moral theory, against
the objections of its critics, by weaving geographical considerations into the fabric
of its 'negative heuristic'. By treating geography as necessary rather than contingent
to the status of the normative theory, perhaps some of the objections can be
overcome. And I want to come at this in a roundabout way, by considering the
work of the political philosopher Arendt. Hers is not a name that will be
particularly familiar to geographers, and she is probably best known for her work
on totalitarianism (one might add that her work on that much debated subject can
be all too easily dismissed). In truth, in many ways Arendt does seem an eccentric
thinker, a pronounced critic of the 'rise of the social' and of the social sciences, an
admirer of and apologist for the classical polis and its Aristotelian justifications,
314
P Howell
and an enemy of political universalism who can easily be written off as a fully
fledged antimodzmist. And her work is somewhat erratic as well as eccentric,
filled with misjudgements and controversy: these elements in her story I do not
wish to pursue here (see Barnoux, 1990; Canovan, 1974; Kateb, 1983; Parekh,
1981). What I want to do, however, is to point out the similarities between her
thought and Habermas's, for their ideas are imbricated in remarkably similar
projects; and indeed Habermas has noted his debt to Arendt on several occasions
(Habermas, 1977; 1980). What they have in common, first, is the approval of the
combined historical and normative investigation to which I have referred and
applauded: a critical theory, in other words, but one which seeks to counter the
political pessimism both of Weber's analytic of modernity and of the Frankfurt
School; and, second, they both seek to do this by privileging a normative ideal of
public, political discourse. What both Habermas and Arendt essay is the turn to a
communicative theory of political action, one that would enable a normative ideal
of politics to survive alongside a narrative of its social context. Where Habermas
calls this ideal the public sphere, Arendt talks—and I will come to show, significantly
—of public space. Now, admittedly, Habermas's is by far the more sophisticated model,
but he has acknowledged, nevertheless, the influence of Arendt's 'communicative
theory of power' (Habermas, 1977) as an answer to at least some of the dilemmas
that plagued his earlier work. And both Habermas and Arendt seek to specify the
conditions under which such ideas of public debate arise and are threatened; both,
in fact, as Benhabib (1992c) points out, are engaged in presenting models of public
space. The great difference between Arendt and Habermas, however, is that, for
Arendt, public space, as distinct from the public sphere, has not lost its geographical
significance. Despite the basic similarity of their orientations, Arendt pays much
more attention than Habermas to geographical considerations, and over and above
this to the virtues of particularity—so much so that I am tempted to call her entire
body of work an historical geography of modernity, and one which is ultimately
very different from Habermas's. It is this 'spatial dimension', the 'spatial quality' of
Arendt's work which points up the noted absence of space in Habermas's parallel
investigation of modernity (Canovan, 1974, page 112; d'Entreves, 1992; Ricoeur,
1983).
Now, I do not intend to go into Arendt's work in any kind of detail here: that
would be beyond the scope of this paper. In its essentials, though, it is a narrative
concerned with the loss and potential rebuilding of public, political space in the
modern world:
"Politics ... is a matter of people sharing a common world and a common space
of appearance in which public concerns can emerge and be articulated from
different perspectives. For politics to occur it is not enough to have a collection
of private individuals voting separately and anonymously according to their
private opinions. Rather these individuals must be able to see and talk to one
another in public, to meet in a public space so that their differences as well as
their commonalities can emerge and become the subject of democratic debate"
(d'Entreves, 1992, page 152).
Arendt makes use of this conception of public political action in her interpretation
of modernity, as a theory of the human condition and the norm of politics, at the
same time as she proceeds via an historical geography of this civic republican ideal
under modern conditions. In her analyses of totalitarianism, the modern world, and
of the republican tradition, Arendt promotes a normative, political theory of public
space and the threats to its full flowering; and, in all this, geography is not incidental.
The spatial language that pervades her writings (and which are matched, I think,
only by Foucault) is not simply a matter of topographical metaphor, as some
Public npnco unci tho public aphoro
316
have alleged.*9* It is quite clear, for example, that when Arendt talks of the loss of
space* in modernity, she means this to be taken literally as well as figuratively.00*
Public space is not just a metaphor: her communicative theory of modernity is
never too far away from an ontological and epistcmological theory of communications.
For instance, like Marx, Arcndt talks of apecd conquering space, and of the "abolition
of distance" (Arcndt, 1959, page 227); she refers too to the shrinkage of space
effected by epistemological events, such as the invention of the telescope and the
exploration of the globe (1959, pages 2 2 5 - 2 2 9 ; 1968b); she notes further the
problems posed to settled nation-state polities in the face of economic globalism
and the promotion of race thinking (Arcndt, 1973a) (Arendfs debt to Luxemburg
as well as to Marx and Weber should be noted as being instructive (see Arcndt,
1970; Luxemburg, 1951)]. In other words, Arcndt links modernity to space, and, in
particular, to the European rise to global hegemony, so that globalism, universalism,
and imperialism all have a common ancestry. Arendfs geographical imagination, and
her awareness of the costs of modernity—in the colonial and imperial adventures,
for instance—sets her communicative theory of power into a wider context than
that of Habcrmas. She may not, unlike Habermas, have much to say about the
way that geographical changes associated with modernization help bring the public
sphere into being, but by noting the importance of space to the continuation of the
public sphere under conditions of modernity she is able to bring geographical
considerations into somewhat sharper focus.
Arendt docs not insist, for instance, that the rise of the social realm in modernity
precludes the existence of public space. Despite her reputation as an antimodcrnist,
Arendt is concerned to promote a theory of communicative political action which
will still retain normative force. She puts forward a theory of empowerment, insisting
on the redemptive power of political association and public participation. And to
this end, Arendt lauds all forms of ground-level popular mobilization as having
the potential to set up a public space in which political action—"unimpaired
intersiibjectivity"—can flourish (see Habermas, 1977, pages 3-9). This public space
(or spaces, the equivalent, if you will, of plural public spheres), is viewed by
Arendt both normatively and contextually, but is different from Habermas in that it
is always at its most powerful and legitimate at the scale of the local and the
particular. Arendt therefore argues fiercely for localism against centralization, for
power from below, in the form of local political councils (1965b). It is in such
pragmatic political arenas, she argues, that the civic ideal of the polis can still be
realised, at the scale of the local and the particular. (U)
Now, I do not want to make too much of the contrast with Habermas's
geographical blind spot; there are plenty of things missing from or simply wrong
(9)
Arendt's language is, in fact, an attempt to write in a nonbureaucratic language, much as
Weber aimed at with his methodology (Keane, 1984, page 72; see also Canovan, 1974, pages
10 and 53). There are great similarities, too, in terms of a fragmented, spatialized, and
contextual approach, between Arendt's method and the kind of work produced by Benjamin
(see Gregory, 1991).
° 0) Both Keane and Benhabib are at pains to deny any geographical or topographical linkage,
for which see Keane's (1984, page 26) rejection of the "pre-political and apologetic implications
of the 'geographic' model of private and public" proposed by Sennett (1986; see also Benhabib,
1992c, pages 93-94). However, although the purely discursive space of Habermas's public
sphere may be evident, Arendt's conception of public space, with its commitment to localism,
is inseparable from her historical geography of modernity. For an interesting architectural
contrast, see Frampton (1979) and Habermas (1985).
° n See also Castoriadis's version of direct democracy: "General participation in politics
entails the creation for the first time in history of a public space. The emphasis Hannah
Arendt has put on this, her elucidation of its meaning, is one of her outstanding contributions
to the understanding of Greek institutional creation" (1991, page 112).
316
P Howell
with Arendt's own account for that. However, it is, I think, this "persistent
localism"(12) which truly separates Habermas and Arendt. For, if Arendt indeed
sows the seeds of a communicative theory of action, she inevitably parts company
with Habermas and with his later attempt to formulate a theory of universal
pragmatics in particular, in that she links politics to particularity, contextuality, and
localism in ways that he would find untenable (see Heller and Feher, 1988, pages
55-59). (13) Whereas she insisted that particularity was something to be valued—
whether in the form of national polities, free political spaces, local councils, and so
on—the essence of Habermas's universal pragmatics is surely the opposite. Habermas
moves away from historically grounded reflections in favour of an abstract and
excessively formalised theory of undistorted communication, refusing to countenance
either the viability or the problems associated with a commitment to the particular
and the contingent. This move to universal pragmatics faces, as I have already
suggested, certain glaring problems that bedevil the entire project of reconstruction,
and, in attempting to avoid the implications of a communicative rationality that
depended on context, Habermas seems to create as many problems as he solves.(14)
By contrast, Arendt refuses to separate her normative theory of the public sphere,
and her communicative theory of action, from her defence of the particular, the
embedded, and the local. Hers is a theory of principled localism, to be set against
Habermas's universal pragmatics. In effect, I believe she attempts to recover a
moral universalism, but only through a practical reason that does not attempt to
surpass contingency and particularity (Heller and Feher, 1988, page 59). For this
reason, Arendt is unwilling to transcend particular polities in favour of a universal
politics: political globalism as much as philosophical universalism remains a terrible
vision of the future for Arendt:
"Political concepts are based on plurality, diversity, and mutual limitations. A
citizen is by definition a citizen among citizens of a country among countries.
His [sic] rights and duties must be defined and limited, not only by those of his
fellow citizens, but also by the boundaries of a territory. Philosophy may conceive
of the earth as the homeland of mankind [sic] and of one unwritten law, eternal
and valid for all. Politics deals with men [sic], nationals of many countries and
heirs to many pasts; its laws are the positively established fences which hedge
in, protect, and limit the space in which freedom is not a concept, but a living,
political reality. The establishment of one sovereign world state, far from being
the prerequisite for world citizenship, would be the end of all citizenship. It
would not be the climax of world politics, but quite literally its end" (1970,
pages 81-82).<15>
(12
>The phrase comes from Breen (1980). For a discussion of early American historical
geography, see Arendt (1965b), Jacobson (1983), and Nisbet (1977). In addition, Mumford
(1966, page 381) contains material pertinent to and referenced by Arendt.
<13)Rorty (1989, page 68) has referred to Habermas's antiprovinciality in his own attack on
universalism; he believes, too, that the demand for a reconciliation between the public and
the private distinction is untenable.
(14)
For instance, the possibility of systematically distorted communication including "the uneven
distribution of dialogue possibilities among nations, classes, regions, social groups, and
individuals", and also violence, remain unaddressed (see Keane, 1984, page 164; see also the
journal Public published by the Public Access Collective, Toronto; for example PAC, 1992).
Arendt's analyses do concern themselves with at least some of these issues (Arendt, 1965a;
1969; 1973b).
(15
> Arendt seems to have aimed at a cosmopolitanism that avoids the dangers of universalism
without descending into the parochial (see Arendt, 1970, pages 8 7 - 8 8 ; Hannerz, 1990; also,
for an interesting discussion of the significance of territorial rights for political theory, see
Winfield, 1991).
Public fjpnco find (ho public aphoro
317
What this means is that Arcndt shifts some of the universalist force of Habermas's
theory of the public sphere to the local, the particular, and the contingent forms of
public space as it is created by communicative action (for a discussion of Arcndt
as a contextualist thinker, see Salkever, 1983). The practice of citizenship is to be
viewed, in her terms, not as a universal or global ideal, but as intimately linked to
the existence of a public sphere of participatory democracy which does not
transcend particular, and plural, political communities.
Why is it worth emphasising this element in Arendt's thought? In part, it is
worthwhile because this orientation of Arcndt's is a necessary corrective to the
absence of space in the notion of the public sphere; through this, Arcndt is able to
keep alive the ambition of a parallel political and social theory, against the temptation
to jettison normative criteria for contextualist empiricism—what it suggests is that
geography might be assimilable within the framework of a normative and political
theory of modernity. And, to go further, the theory of modernity would then
necessarily have to be an historical geography, in which the particular and the
normative could be seen to be complementary instead of competing, Also, though,
the recovery of particularity goes some way to meeting the objections of communitarian
critics. By trying to put space back into the 'negative heuristic', Arcndt suggests
that the relativism which seems to be an integral part of the antiunivcrsalist focus
on the norms of particular communities and cultures is an unnecessary indulgence.
Habcrmas may have little to say himself about the normative geography of the public
sphere, but that does not mean we arc justified in rejecting that sphere in favour of
communitarian relativism. Indeed, it puts some of the onus upon communitarians
to justify their own position: what sorts of community do communitarian political
theorists, in fact, refer to? Is not the promotion of a political community unified
around substantive conceptions of the common good anachronistic? How do we
reconcile communitarianism with the plural conceptions of the common good that
are so characteristic of modernity?
By avoiding these communitarian pitfalls, Arendt, in her version of procedural
democracy, is able to salvage a normative theory of political action for the modern
world; and this amounts to an historical geography of modernity. Her focus on
plural public spaces means that, in some ways, Arendt can be seen to stand
helpfully between Habermas and his communitarian-contextualist critics, between
the liberal promotion of the individual and its critics' promotion of community, or
(in different terms) between a Kantian universalism and an Aristotelian particularism
(Benhabib, 1992a, page 124). By delinking the purposes and principles of procedural
democracy from the universalist ambitions that bedevil Habermas, Arendt is able
to open up a space in which the discussion of particular contexts and communities,
with their competing notions of the common good, may be helpfully reevaluated.
Arendt's work suggests that some of the central dilemmas of modernity—and, in
particular, the paradoxes of plural value-spheres and the differentiation of societycan be overcome; not through value integration nor the dedifferentiation of social
spheres, but through the reactivation of the conditions for active citizenship and
democratic self-determination (d'Entreves, 1992, page 162). A normative vision of
politics, based on the public spaces of participation and communicative action, can
exist under conditions of modernity. And, in conceiving of a survival of politics
such as this [albeit of a 'highly differentiated, fragmented, and localized' kind perhaps,
"a plurality of public spheres" (Keane, 1984, page 29)] Arendt is able, I suggest, to
fill in the "distinct gap in Habermas's positive vision of politics ... between the level
of a new, broad collective identity, grounded in a balanced model of modernity,
and the level of local or internal practices and institution-building" (White, 1988,
page 141). Because "the values of solidarity, autonomy, and the acknowledgement
318
P Howell
of difference" (d'Entreves, 1992, page 165) can be normatively justified and
integrated in Arendt's political philosophy we can, by turning the public sphere
into a conception of public spaces, put forward a notion of citizenship and democracy
that matches our understanding of modernity. This would be a 'citizen ethics', an
'ethics of solidarity', in the context of real public spaces, involving
"the encouragement and cultivation of a public ethos of democratic participation.
Between the basic institutions of a polity, embodying principles of the morally
right, and the domain of moral interactions in the lifeworld, in which virtue
often comes to the fore, lie the civic practices and associations of a society in
which individuals face each other neither as pure legal subjects nor as moral
agents standing under ties of ethical obligations to each other but as public
agents in a political space" (Benhabib, 1992a, page 140).
That this should not be devoid of a spatial dimension is a point made by Dallmayr
in defence of Arendt:
"Only by participating in local and regional affairs ... do we learn, and become
proficient in, political practice or praxis in general—while the reverse procedure
invariably ends in speculative abstractions. From this perspective, local and
regional politics emerges as the training ground for global interactions, and the
small-scale polis as the laboratory for cosmopolis" (1984, page 10).
So, however great the similarities between Arendt's project and Habermas's
parallel attempt to transcend the weaknesses of critical theory, there remains this
obvious difference between them. Where Habermas is silent about, indeed almost
dismissive of, space (the particular and the contingent), Arendt argues insistently
for something very like a public geography in which the fullest human action, that
is to say, political action, can survive and flourish. A political theory of modernity
might thus, I think, be preserved against the charges of universalism and abstraction,
and against a collapse into the 'local knowledge' of an empiricist social science. It
would not be a communitarian political theory, though it might study particular
communities; nor would it be a contextualist social theory, though it would place a
concern with the particular—with the local, the partial, and the contingent—at the
heart of its analysis. If geography could be built into the 'negative heuristic' of
such a political theory—if, in other words, public spheres became conceivable as
public spaces—then the historical geography of modernity which follows from and
feeds into it might preserve a 'strong' version of public political life to counter the
pessimism of much of the theory of modernity. The normative spaces necessary for
this would then be an inextricable part of our research, a geography of "the small
hidden islands of freedom" (Arendt, 1968a, page 6) to set beside that of Foucault's
carceral archipelago.
5 Conclusions
In this paper, I have argued that a normative, political theory of modernity is
worth pursuing in the form of an historical geography. Habermas's work on the
public sphere provides an important benchmark for that project, combining as it
does a normative theory with a contextual research program; but, in recognising
the utility of the concept of the public sphere, it is necessary to come to terms
with the objections of Habermas's critics, who insist that his universalism is both
unhelpful and unjustifiable. Under the combined attack of communitarians and
contextualists in particular, it might seem that the investigation of normative politics
is fated to collapse into the social analysis of particular communities, cultures, and
contexts. I have argued that this is an unnecessary conclusion: for, in fact, the
arguments proffered for this are often as objectionable as Habermas's universalism.
Public apnco nnd tho public sphoro
319
What Arcndt's parallel work on participatory democracy suggests, by contrast,
is that a normative concern for public space can be reconciled with a concern for
particularity, context, and locality, without justifying the relativism of Hnbcrmas\s
opponents. Although Hnbcrmns's conception of the public sphere is hampered and
disabled by his insistence on universal norms, Arendfs argues forcefully for the
preservation of plural public spaces; this means that she is able to preserve a
'strong' conception of polities under conditions of modernity.
And, furthermore, by putting space into a normative political theory of modernity,
she enables us to think through its historical geography in what are, I think, new
and useful ways, it is not just that, as geographers, we ought to be willing to admit
questions of political theory into our deliberations, therefore, nor that we need to
be conversant with the debates in political theory between liberals, communitarians,
and radical democrats; we should recognize, too, that geography and political
theory are thoroughly implicated in a series of critical discussions in and around
the historical geography of modernity. By allowing for a normative political theory
from which geography has not been excised, Arendt does open up a space for
these debates. I am thinking, in particular, of the whole question of minority rights:
it is clear that the nation-statc-centred basis both of liberalism and of its critics has
severely distorted the nature of the argument concerning the status of minority
cultures. The fact that a disjunctive between political and cultural communities
marks out the majority of the world's polities (Kymlicka, 1989) means that the
issues of minority rights, aboriginal rights, apartheid carry vital implications for the
historical geography of modernity, and thus there is a need to problcmatize the
nature of geographical communities within normative political investigation. And
there are other sets of equally decisive questions that also require our attention:
the status of territorial rights (Winfield, 1991), the debate over Europe (Heller and
Feher, 1988; Tassin, 1992), the legal status of foreigners (Kristcva, 1991), and
many others, including the concerns of feminist and postcolonial critics. That these
are geographical questions is not in doubt: they indicate the need for geographers
to get to grips with the import of political theories concerning the nature of
community, of politics, and of democracy. If, by promoting Arendt's notion of
public space, I have suggested that we can go some way towards a view of citizenship
and political action that is able to take on board the issues of cultural pluralism,
I am well aware that I have hardly exhausted the discussion. Nevertheless, by
turning the public sphere into plural public spaces, Arendt has laid the foundations
upon which we might build an historical geography of modernity within which such
normative and political questions are taken to be integral rather than left implicit.
Acknowledgements. An initial version of this paper was presented at the Eighth International
Conference of Historical Geographers held at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver,
in August 1991. I would like to acknowledge the comments of Derek Gregory, Nigel Thrift,
and Michael Dear, and the inspiration of Seyla Benhabib.
References
Arendt H, 159 The Human Condition (Doubleday, New York)
Arendt H, 1965a Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Books,
Harmondsworth, Middx)
Arendt H, 1965b On Revolution (Viking Press, New York)
Arendt H, 1968b, "The conquest of space and the stature of man", in Between Past and
Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought Ed. H Arendt (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth,
Middx) pp 2 6 5 - 2 8 0
Arendt H, 1969 On Violence (Harcourt, Brace and World, New York)
Arendt H, 1970 Men in Dark Times (Jonathan Cape, London)
Arendt H, 1973a The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York)
Arendt H, 1973b Crises of the Republic (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middx)
320
P Howell
Barber B, 1988 The Conquest of Politics: Liberal Philosophy in Democratic Times (Princeton
University Press, Princeton, NJ)
Barnoux D, 1990 Visible Spaces: Hannah Arendt and the German-Jewish Experience (The Johns
Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD)
Benhabib S, 1986 Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory
(Columbia University Press, New York)
Benhabib S, 1992a Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary
Ethics (Polity Press, Cambridge)
Benhabib S, 1992b, "Autonomy, modernity and community: communitarianism and critical
social theory in dialogue", in Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in
Contemporary Ethics Ed. S Benhabib (Polity Press, Cambridge) pp 6 8 - 8 8
Benhabib S, 1992c, "Models of public space: Hannah Arendt, the liberal tradition and Jiirgen
Habermas", in Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary
Ethics Ed. S Benhabib (Polity Press, Cambridge) pp 8 9 - 1 2 0
Breen T H, 1980, "Persistent localism: English social change and the shaping of New
England institutions", in Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America
(Oxford University Press, New York) pp 3 - 2 4
Calhoun C, 1992, "Introduction: Habermas and the public sphere", in Habermas and the
Public Sphere Ed. C Calhoun (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA) pp 1-48
Canovan M, 1974 The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt (Methuen, Andover, Hants)
Carling A, 1986, "Rational choice Marxism" New Left Review number 160, 2 4 - 6 2
Castoriadis C, 1991 Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy: Essays in Political Philosophy (Oxford
University Press, Oxford)
Dallmayr F R, 1984 Polls and Praxis: Exercises in Contemporary Political Theory (MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA)
Deleuze G, 1979, "Foreword: the rise of the social", in The Policing of Families Ed. J Donzelot
(Pantheon Books, New York) pp ix-xvii
d'Entreves M P, 1992, "Hannah Arendt and the idea of citizenship", in Dimensions of Radical
Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community Ed. C Mouffe (Verso, London) pp 145-168
Driver F, 1985, "Power, space, and the body: a critical assessment of Foucault's Discipline and
Punish" Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 3 425-446
Driver F, 1988, "The historicity of human geography" Progress in Human Geography 12
497-506
Eley G, 1990, "Edward Thompson, social history and political culture: the making of a
working-class public, 1780-1850", in E. P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives Eds H J Kaye,
K McLelland (Polity Press, Cambridge) pp 1 2 - 4 9
Eley G, 1992, "Nations, public, and political cultures: placing Habermas in the nineteenth
century", in Habermas and the Public Sphere Ed. C Calhoun (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
pp 289-339
Eley G, Nield K, 1980, "Why does social history ignore politics?" Social History 5 2 4 9 - 2 8 3
Forester J (Ed.), 1985 Critical Theory and Public Life (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
Frampton K, 1979, "The status of man and the status of his objects: a reading of The Human
Condition", in Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World Ed. M A Hill (St Martin's
Press, New York) pp 101-130
Fraser N, 1989a, "Women, welfare and the politics of need interpretation", in Politics and
Social Theory Ed. P Lassman (Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Andover, Hants) pp 104-122
Fraser N, 1989b, "The French Derrideans: politicizing deconstruction or deconstructing the
political?", in Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory
(Polity Press, Cambridge) pp 6 9 - 9 2
Fraser N, 1989c, "What's critical about critical theory? The case of Habermas and gender",
in Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Polity Press,
Cambridge) pp 113-143
Geertz C, 1973 The Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books, New York)
Geertz C, 1983 Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (Basic Books,
New York)
Goodman D, 1992, "Public sphere and private life: toward a synthesis of current
historiographical approaches to the old regime" History and Theory 31 1-20
Gregory D, 1989, "The crisis of modernity? Human geography and critical social theory", in
New Models in Geography Eds R Peet, N Thrift (Unwin Hyman, London) pp 348-390
Public opoco mt\ tho public sphere
321
Gregory D, 1990, "'Grand maps of history*: structurntion theory and social change", in
Anthony Guldens: Consensus ami Controversy Eds J Clark, C Modgil, 8 Modgil (Falmer
Press, Basingstoke, Hants) pp 2 1 7 - 2 3 4
Gregory D, 1991, "Interventions in the historical geography of modernity: social theory,
spatlality and the politics of representation" Geografiska Annaler ft 73 17-44
Gregory D, Urry J (Eds), 1985 Social Relations and Spatial Structures (Maemillnn, London)
Haan N, Bellah R N, Rabinow P, Sullivan W U (Eds), 1983 Social Science as Moral Inquiry
(Columbia University Press, New York)
Habermas J, 1977, "Hannah Arendfs communications concept of power" Sochi Research 44
3-24
Habcrmas J, 1980, "On the German-Jewish heritage" 7c?/av 44 127-131
Habermas J, 1985, "Modern and postmodern architecture", in Critical Theory and Public Life
Ed. J Forester (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA) pp 3 1 7 - 3 2 9
Habermas J, 1989 The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category
of ftourgeois Society (Polity Press, Cambridge)
Hannerz U, 1990, "Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture", in Global Culture: Nationalism,
Globalization and Modernity Ed. M Featherstonc (Sage, London) pp 237-251
Harvey D, 1973 Social Justice and the City (Basil Blackwell, Oxford)
Heller A, Fehcr F, 1988 The Postmodern Political Condition (Polity Press, Cambridge)
Holub R C, 1991 Jiirgen Habermas: Critic in the Public Sphere (Routledgc, Chapman and Hall,
Andovcr, Hants)
Jacobson N% 1983, "Parable and paradox: in response to Arendt's On Revolution" Salmagundi
60 123-139
Jardinc A, 1985 Gynesis: Configurations of Women and Modernity (Cornell University Press,
Ithaca, NY)
Kateb G, 1983 Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil (Martin Robertson, Oxford)
Kcane J, 1984 Public Life and Late Capitalism: Toward a Socialist Theory of Democracy
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
Kcat R, 1981 The Politics of Social Theory: Habermas, Freud, and the Critique of Positivism
(Basil Biackwetl, Oxford)
Kristcva J, 1991 Strangers to Ourselves (Harvester Whcatsheaf, Hcmcl Hempstead, Herts)
Kymiicka W, 1989 Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
Lash S, Urry J, 1986, "The dissolution of the social", in Sociological Theory in Transition
Eds M L Wardcll, S P Turner (Allen and Unwin, London) pp 9 5 - 1 0 9
Lassman P, 1986, "Sociological theory and politics", in Sociological Theory in Transition
Eds M L Wardell, S P Turner (Allen and Unwin, London) pp 5 9 - 6 8
Lassman P, 1989, "Introduction: politics and social theory", in Politics and Social Theory
Ed, P Lassman (Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Andovcr, Hants) pp 1-11
Luke T W, 1990 Social Theory and Modernity: Critique, Dissent, and Revolution (Sage, London)
Lukes S, 1975 fimile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study (Penguin
Books, Harmondsworth, Middx)
Lukes S, 1985 Marxism and Morality (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
Luxemburg R, 1951 The Accumulation of Capital (Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Andover,
Hants)
Mayfield D, Thorne S, 1992, "Social history and its discontents: Gareth Stedman Jones and
the politics of language" Social History 17 165-188
Mumford L, 1966 The City in History(Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middx)
Nisbet R, 1977, "Hannah Arendt and the American Revolution" Social Research 44 6 3 - 7 9
PAC (Ed.), 1992, Public number 6, Public Access Collective, Toronto
Parekh B, 1981 Hannah Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy (Atlantic
Highlands, New Jersey, NJ)
Phillips A, 1991 Engendering Democracy (Polity Press, Cambridge)
Philo C, 1992, "Foucault's geography" Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10
137-161
Pierson C, 1989, "Marxism, democracy and the public sphere", in Politics and Social Theory
Ed. P Lassman (Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Andover, Hants) pp 3 0 - 4 7
Plant R, 1991a Modern Political Thought (Basil Blackwell, Oxford)
Plant R, 1991b, "Political philosophy on Dover Beach? Reasoning, context and community",
in Modern Political Thought (Basil Blackwell, Oxford) pp 3 2 0 - 3 7 9
Poole R, 1991 Morality and Modernity (Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Andover, Hants)
Rawls J, 1971 A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA)
322
P Howell
Ricoeur P, 1983, "Action, story and history: on re-reading The Human Condition" Salmagundi
60 6 0 - 7 2
Rogers A, 1992, "The boundaries of reason: the world, the homeland, and Edward Said"
Environment and PlanningD: Society and Space 10 5 1 1 - 5 2 6
Rorty R, 1989 Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
Sabia D R, Wallulis J (Eds), 1983 Changing Social Science: Critical Theory and Other Critical
Perspectives (State University of New York, Albany, NY)
Salkever S G, 1983, "Beyond interpretation: human agency and the slovenly wilderness", in
Social Science as Moral Inquiry Eds N Haan, R N Bellah, P Rabinow, W M Sullivan
(Columbia University Press, New York) pp 195-215
Sartori G, 1973, "What is politics?" Political Theory 1 5 - 2 6
Scaff L, 1989 Fleeing the Iron Cage: Culture, Politics, and Modernity in the Thought of Max
Weber (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA)
Sennett R, 1986 The Fall of Public Man (Faber and Faber, London)
Soja E, 1989 Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (Verso,
London)
Tassin E, 1992, "Europe: a political community?", in Dimensions of Radical Democracy:
Pluralism, Citizenship, Community Ed. C Mouffe (Verso, London)
Taylor C, 1985a, "Social theory as practice", in Philosophy and the Human Sciences:
Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) pp 9 1 - 1 1 5
Taylor C, 1985b, "Atomism", in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) pp 187-210
Unger R M, 1975 Knowedge and Politics (The Free Press, New York)
Unger R M, 1976 Law in Modern Society: Toward a Criticism of Social Theory (The Free Press,
New York)
Unger R M, 1987 False Necessity: And-necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical
Democracy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
Wardell M L, Turner S P (Eds), 1986a Sociological Theory in Transition (Allen and Unwin,
London)
Wardell M L, Turner S P, 1986b, "Introduction: dissolution of the classical project", in
Sociological Theory in Transition Eds M L Wardell, S P Turner (Allen and Unwin, London)
pp 1 1 - 1 8
Werckmeister O K, 1989 Citadel Culture (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL)
White S K, 1988 The Recent Work of Jiirgen Habermas: Reason, Justice and Modernity
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
Whitfield S, 1980 Into the Dark: Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism (Temple University Press,
Philadelphia, PA)
Winch P, 1958 The Idea of a Social Science (Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Andover, Hantgs)
Winch P, 1972, "Understanding a primitive society", in Ethics and Action (Routledge,
Chapman and Hall, Andover, Hants) pp 8 - 4 9
Winfield R D, 1991, "Political freedom and territorial rights", in Freedom and Modernity (State
University of New York Press, Albany, NY) pp 2 8 3 - 3 0 4
Wolin S, 1981, "Max Weber: legitimation, method and theory" Political Theory 9 4 0 1 - 4 2 4
Young I M, 1987, "Impartiality and the civic public: some implications of feminist critiques
of moral and political theory", in Feminism as Critique: Essays on the Politics of Gender in
Late-capitalist Societies Eds S Benhabib, D Cornell (Polity Press, Cambridge) pp 5 7 - 7 6
Young I M, 1990 Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ)
p
© 1993 a Pion publication printed in Great Britain