Antipode 21:1, 1989, p.

1- 12
ISSN 0066 4812

POSTMODERNISM, MARXISM, AND

LOCALITY RESEARCH: THE
CONTRIBUTION OF CRITICAL
REALISM TO THE DEBATE
JOHN LOVERING+

Once upon a time, there was an architectural movement known as

postmodernism. The term was soon extended to cover a diverse

species of art and literature which broke with the sensibilities of

modernism (Berman, 1984a). In the last few years postmodernism has swept onwards into the social sciences, and particularly

into radical human geography. Here it addresses a diverse, some

might say unfocused, range of issues, ranging from the philosophical foundations of social science, through substantive theory
and methodology, to the choice of empirical research issues (for
enthusiastic advocacy, see Cooke, 1987a). As Julie Graham and
Robert Beauregard showed in a recent issue of Antipode (Vol20,
No 1, 1988), it may be hard to pin postmodernism down precisely,
but it is not hard to recognise it when you meet it.
Grahams account of the confrontation between postmodernists and marxists at the Association of American Geographers
1987 Conference at Portland will have rung a bell for many who
attended the Urban Change and Conflict Conference at Kent,
England, at around the same time. This confrontation has rumbled
on ever more loudly since (for a clamorous example see Harvey,
1987) and has become a recurrent motif running through both
formal and informal gatherings on both sides of the At1antic.l
The complexities of this debate are compounded by the fact that
postmodernism in geography has somehow become associated
with the resurgence of locality research (Beauregard, 1988: 56).
This is presumably because some influential commentators have
claimed that locality research is, or should be, inherently postmodernist in spirit (see especially Phil Cooke, 1987a and 1987b). It
has been claimed that the salience of the locality has objectively
t School for Advanced Urban Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 4EA

2 JOHN LOVERING

increased as a feature of the emergent postmodern spatial paradigm (Cooke, 1987c, see also Urry and Lash, 1987).
This paper argues that the postmodernism-marxism debate
has become unnecessarily messy and inconclusive, and this is
largely because it conflates several quite distinct issues. After
drawing out some of these separate issues, I will suggest that they
can be more fruitfully addressed than at present, by adopting a
critical realist perspective.

Issues in the Debate

Theories of science
Much of the discussion about marxism and postmodernism is
concerned with the nature of scientific practice. Postmodernism is
often identified with anti-antifoundationalism (Cooke, 1987b). In
this view, postmodernism generalises the cynicism of philosophers
such as Derrida, Rorty, Lyotard, and others, towards totalising
theories. Postmodernism is a breath of fresh air, promising to free
us from the tyrany of enslaving theoretical categories and mindsets. In practice, this desire to avoid dogma tends to lead to a
position in which paradigms and metalevels are deemed to be
bad things by definition (Sim, 1986: 13).
Without going into the philosophy of science in detail, I would
argue that this represents a major confusion. If we reject the possibility of establishing some agreed criteria for science that are more
than simply pragmatic, arbitrary conventions, we throw out some
precious babies with the bathwater of dogma. To argue - like
Rorty - that if knowledge is not pure, it is not worth having at all,
is going too far (Davenport, 1987: 394). If knowledge is no more
than an arbitrary invention, communication between people with
different theories becomes strictly impossible or an illusion. In
flight from the supposed imperialism of totalising theory, we
embrace an even more awesome tyrany of Babel. If this is postmodernism, then its relationship to Marxism is quite clear there is no relationship at all. There are versions of this position
which present themselves as post-marxism, as if this was some
modern and user-friendly species of marxism, but this is a sleight
of hand. Marxism is committed to the scientific development of
concepts which can claim to represent real social structures, and
as such it is irreducibly realist. Marxism presumes a pro-science
position (Bhaskar, 1979; Outhwaite, 1987).

POSTMODERNISM, MARXISM, AND LOCALITY RESEARCH

Life-world versus systems perspectives

For many people the anti-foundational aspect of postmodernism
is a side-show. It is possible to be unmoved by its rejection of
science and yet to be attracted by postmodernism for its characteristic focus on the experiential and on cultural artefacts. After
reading Bermans brilliant survey, it is hard not to be inspired by
the results of an emphasis on modernism, as a mode of experience of modern life (Berman, 1984a). Grahams piece in Antipode
seems to share this spirit. Marxism approaches societies from a
birds-eye-view from which it is possible to identify aggregate
patterns, and structural relations. This may reveal the systemic
character of social relationships, but it tempts us into essentialism.
It fails to grasp the fact that people make sense of that world
through their experience of it as they live out their lives. We
need to give as much attention to this life-worlddimension as to
the systems level, although the latter is more familiar in marxist
and orthodox social science.2
But there is a danger here of being bowled over by enthusiasm
for a new research direction. The choice of a research object is an
analytical question which is separate from the choice of theoretical
equipment (or baggage) to make meaning of the evidence it
throws up. So it could be argued that an account of the development of high-culture, the urban environment, aspects of subjective experience, and manifestations of resistance such as Berman
provides could be written from a more recognisably marxist
position. But questions of focus and of theory do tend to be
bundled together, and indeed this packaging is part of postmodernisms emergent status as a new paradigm, or fashionable
style. Postmodernism is more than just an innocent signpost to
neglected fields of human experience. It also offers a particular set
of theoretical orientations which shape how those experiences
should be explained. By the same token, it also predisposes
research towards a particular set of propositions as to what can be
done about them.
These questions were addressed in a valuable exchange
between Marshall Berman and Perry Anderson (Anderson, 1984;
Berman, 198413). Bermans scintillating All That is Solid Melts
into Air is applauded by Anderson for its breadth of vision and
wealth of detail. But he is less happy about what Berman does
with his material. In effect, he argues that Berman slips from a sensitive account of ideas and their origins, to a theory of the permanence of the kind of ceaseless change characterising modernism.
One implication of this particular theory (which is, incidentally,

JOHN LOVERING

just about as totalising as it could be), is that the politics of socialism loses any sense. The cultural conditions and subjective experiences upon which socialist impulses are based must, in Bermans
world, also eventually melt into air. Ultimately, Berman accounts
for the history of subjective experiences of change with a social
explanation that amounts to little more than a deus ex machina.
Specific events and effects, associated with specific phases in the
development of capitalism, become reified. History is lost, and the
subtleties of the development of the capitalist economy, not to
mention that of the state, are obscured. This decline into idealism
- albeit in a fashionable high-tech disguise - can be traced to
Bermans unanchored methodological focus on the individual and
the experiential. Anderson appeals for more history, and this
means more attention to the specific conjunctures of capitalist
development.
Several strands of the Berman-Anderson debate can be picked
up in the discussion between Jameson and Davis (Jameson, 1984;
Davis, 1984). These illustrate some major differences between
marxist and postmodernist research. The former is concerned to
explain in order to change. It sees explanation as lying in the
identification of social structures and the everyday practices in
which those structures subsist. From this perspective, postmodernism is devoted more to celebration than to explanation (and
especially the celebration of individual creativity). This difference
of spirit between marxism and postmodernism reflects the ways
they are popularly viewed. Dry and dusty marxism, old and
European, boringly asks for scientific explanation. Youthful and
transatlantic postmodernism, on the other hand, is more interested
in evoking and celebrating experience, and is sceptical about the
very possibility of understanding it. In the former perspective the
purpose of human geography is to identify the mechanisms
through which the capitalist structure of society shapes its spatial
forms (Massey, 1984). In the latter view, the point is to identify
local specificities, indeed to extol1 them. So Cooke emphasises
what he calls the proactive capacities of localities (Cooke, forthcoming).3 In this perspective, attempts to explain these in a
marxist spirit will inevitably turn out to be reductionist,
spuriously privileging class above all else (Graham, 1988: 62).

Radical fheoy and practice

This divergence of purpose around the analysis of subjectivity is
not as new as is sometimes suggested. Many of the ideas

POSTMODERNISM, MARXISM, AND LOCALITY RESEARCH

associated with postmodernism previously appeared as claims for

the role of the agency, while the critique of the psychology of
objective consciousness became a central theme of counterculture ideologies in the 1960s (Rosak, 1972: chap. 7). Postmodernisms emphasis on the experiential as opposed to the structural
also has fairly obvious sociological correlates, and connects to its
political projects. From a marxist corner, it could be argued that
current popularity of postmodernisms individualistic politics is
hardly surprising in an epoch which is witnessing the collapse of
traditional collectivism. Its strength in the US, in particular, could
reflect the historic subordination of US radicalism to peculiarly
petty-bourgeois forms of analysis and political practice, these in
turn making sense in terms of the distinctively individualist cast of
US capitalism, and the weak development of class organisations
(Davis, 1986). Buhles recent study of marxism in the USA stresses
the persistent influence of religious sensibility, spiritualism, temperance, Christology, and liberation theology, and he portrays the
goal of popular struggle as a universal cultural experience
rendered both holy and fun (Buhle, 1987: 263). In Buhles book,
and in the politics to which it refers, relationships between social
groups tend to be treated in an empiricist additive manner,
rather than in terms of necessary structural connections. As a
result, coIIectivities (and concepts such as the working class) are
defined empirically, rather than structurally (Montgomery, 1987:
125). The substitution of psychological and subjective notions for
analytical social concepts is understandable in terms of American
radicalisms social bases, and its concern since the mid-century to
scramble for the remnants of human experience (Jacoby, 1973:
48). But in terms of political strategy the implications are for a
mildly liberalised capitalism at best, while the millenial vision is of
anarchism (in this light, it is not surprising that the most prominent legacy of most 1960s-radicalismseems to have been up-market
consumer capitalism). Significantly missing is a medium range
strategy for socialist economic transformation.
This sweeping generalisation could be countered with an
equivalent critique of traditional marxism (supposing for a
moment that there is such a thing). Intellectually ensnared by collectivism, it is politically shackled to the out-dated and discredited
shells of former working class movements. So limited, it cannot
fully appreciate the theoretical or political significance of radical
individualism.4 What is needed is an alternative marxism that
can overcome the dogmatism of the traditional left, by learning
from postmodernist anti-essentialism (Graham, 1988: 65).

JOHN LOVERING

Non-Essentialist Mamism
On investigation, however, it becomes very unclear what this
learning would entail. Postmodernism may offer us some exciting
new approaches, a way to invigorate researchers tired of the old
problems, but it is far from clear that it does very much to help us
in the nitty gritty of developing an alternative marxism. For the
new questions which postmodernism allegedly asks of marxism
turn out not to be new at all. Take the central issue of essentialism, the lamentable tendency to reduce every phenomenon to
an expression of a central essence of capitalism. There is little
recognition in postmodern discourse that the hazards of essentialism have been debated within marxism since it emerged - as
Graham admits (1988: 63). For example, if one recent marxist
writer stands out for his explicit attempt to reject essentialism it
must surely be Louis Althusser, who devoted his work to subverting the crude economism which had become orthodox since
Stalin. Yet such is the awareness of marxist scholarship that it is
common, indeed almost obligatory, to dismiss Althusser out of
hand as the essentialist devil incarnate, the embodiment of all that
postmodernism rightly rejects. This caricature does little justice to
his achievements, and none to his intentions (Elliot, 1987).
I do not intend to revisit Althusser, beyond stressing that one of
his pivotal themes was the concept of overdetermination. This
term explicitly attempts to embrace the idea that not everything in
society can be reduced in any simple way to the capitalist structure of production; ideological and political relations are not
epiphenomenal, but constitutive of the social whole (Callinicos,
1983: 91). The concept of overdetermination embodied the search
for an alternative to reductionism, even though Althusser and his
immediate followers never completed this project, being unable to
escape the implications of economic determination in the last
instance (Benton, 1984).
Since Althusser, the issue of overdetermination has been elaborated within, or on the borders of, marxism, where it has given rise
to an exciting new flurry of activity under the heading of critical
realism. At the same time, a similar and better known project has
been undertaken further away from marxism, and closer to
Weberian sociology under the rubric of structurationism
(Giddens, 1984; Cohen, 1987). These developments are virtually
ignored in the debate over marxism and postmodernism in geography. This is remarkable and lamentable (although it may have
something to do with the fact that the disciplines most famous

POSTMODERNISM, MARXISM, AND LOCALITY RESEARCH

marxist is proud to admit that he never understood the concept of

overdetermination in the first place (Harvey, 1987: 369).

Structures, Agents and Structuration

Critical realism is neither incompatible with marxism (as is
implied by Harvey, 1987), nor is it a feeble disguise for marxism
(contrary to Williams and Saunders, 1987). It is rather, I would
argue, an essential foundation for a non-reductionist marxism. At
the same time it is sympathetic to those insights which have been
assimilated to the less naive versions of postmodernism. Critical
realism aims to provide a framework within which the contributions of marxism and postmodernism can be brought together
without eclecticism.
The central proposition of critical realism in this context is that
society must be understood in terms of the transformational
model; people enter into social relations not of their own choosing,
but they engage in actions which entail volition, and the outcome
is simultaneously the reproduction of social structure, and the
exercise of creativity and autonomy (Bhaskar, 1979; Benton, 1984;
Outhwaite, 1987). In structurationist terms the same interdependence would be expressed in the combination of norm-guided
behaviour and individual agency (Giddens, 1984; Cohen, 1987;
Gregson, 1987). The question that concerns us here is how the
postmodernist debate helps us think through these processes.
How much does postmodernism help to solve the riddle of 'overdetermination', 'transformation' or 'structuration'? If the
summary above is at all fair, is not obvious that it contributes very
much at all.
Indeed, if academic marxism has gone into decline because its
practitioners are not in contact with working class struggles (as
Beauregard suggests) it would not be hard to construct a similar
argument in relation to postmodernism. Postmodernist writing
sometimes seems to reflect a distancing and an idealising of the
lives of 'real people' who are somewhere out there. Berman lists a
number of instances of individual resistance, portrayed in heroic
terms, but these accounts are very spectatorial. We are invited to
admire people's will, their actions rather than their effects, to
applaud rather than to analyse their experience. The style of
writing may be evocative, but does it add to our knowledge of the
'social systems' dimension of social life? It is good to get an
imaginative picture of the 'life-world perspective', but bad to get
stuck at that level. We must see individuals both as creatively

JOHN LOVERING

adapting to circumstances not of their choosing, and (contrarily)

helping to recreate those circumstances as a result, as both critical
realists and structurationists have taken great pains to stress.
Crude marxism fails to allow adequately for this, and ends up
reifying social structures. But if this sort of marxism romanticises
collectivities, postmodernism romanticises individuals and reifies
ideas. Neither will necessarily reveal as much about how the
individual and the structural dimensions work together as a good
piece of fiction or a piece of fairly conventional intensive empirical
research (Sayer, 1984).

Conclusion
Julie Graham suggests that there is something in postmodernism
with which we should infuse marxism, to make it more sensitive
and politically potent. She also maintains that marxism should
be defined by its political focus on creating a discourse of class
(Graham, 1988: 64).I would argue that the first claim does not
stand up to investigation, and that the second is an impoverished
postmodern version of a long-standing marxist position. The
strategy of creating class politics defined Rosa Luxemburgs conception of marxism, but she arrived at it from an analysis which
suggested that class relations were already there in social reality
(Geras, 1976). Class politics is about bringing class to the surface,
not constructing it out of ideas. It can be defended more
coherently if it is freed from postmodernist trappings and
resituated in a realist marxism.
The politics of postmodernism tends to be arbitrary, since reality
can be interpreted with equal validity in x different ways, and
politics is about imposing one chosen perspective. Grahams
appeal for a class discourse seems to share this relativism. But a
critical realist reading of marxism argues that a class dimension is
inherent in the structuring of society. This is not the only axis of
organisation, and nor is it to be equated with an easily observable
empirical grouping. The sort of marxism that rests on bald assertions that collectivities are more important than individuals is
neither realist, nor very sensible. The real issue is not that people
are reducible to the groups they belong to, but that the kind of
relationships they can enter into are structurally constrained in a
historically specific way (Bhaskar, Arthur, Benton, Elliott, Lovering
and Osborne, 1988). This perception gets lost in postmodernisms
preoccupation with empirical detail. This weakness also prevents
postmodernism generating a radical politics, rather than a cele-

POSTMODERNISM, MARXISM, AND LOCALITY RESEARCH

bratory individualism. Perhaps the same applies to structuration

theory, which seems to me to move from the contention that
agents could have acted otherwise to focus on empirical constraints such as autonomy and skills. These seem to be explained
in terms of trans-situational rules and human cognitive capacities
(Cohen, 1987: 285 and 295). This focus on empirical regularities
could end up not very far from postmodernisms focus on particularities.
But it would be wrong to overstate the political distance
between the parties. For practical purposes marxist and radical
postmodern politics can, and often do coincide. While marxism
would aim to build class organisations and a class consciousness
out of the material of day-to-day experience, this would in practice
often mean doing things which fuelled the development of
radical individualism, and new social movements. Many of the
activists in community-based campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s
drew implicitly or explicitly on marxism. But they converged in
specific struggles with others whose concerns were more recognisably postmodern. For marxism, these struggles have been
seen as purposeful steps to create the organisational bases for
a structural challenge at the level of the local state and beyond, to
the dominant organisation of economic power. For postmodernism, in its many colours, these struggles are worthwhile, although
they are intellectually arbitrary, part of the social construction of
politics.
I hope it follows from the above that there is nothing necessarily
postmodern about any particular research focus, except in a trivial
sense (i.e. meaning fashionable). Postmodernism has no special
claim to the experiential aspects, the life-world perspective. But
a critical realist version of marxism, which would be both nonreductionist and scientific, would necessarily be interested in all
the dimensions of social relations. It would of course have a major
commitment to produce theories at the level of aggregate systems
such as the economy, but it would know that these mechanisms
do not exist without people. It would want to know how people
engage with each other, in their different contexts and roles, in
such a way that these relationships constitute macro-social
institutions which have systemic properties. These issues would
not be secondary, since they are conceptually important in the
theories of the systems level. The economy is, after all, made up
of people. And people are cultured beings. The desire to understand the individual and culture need not lead to a lapse into
idealism. As Raymond Williams work emphasised, culture
shapes the economy and polity, but it does not drop out of the

10 JOHN LOVERING

blue; it is not made by heroes or intellectuals or even classes, in

isolation from economic and political relations (see Blackburn,
1988).The experiential or subjective dimensions of social life form
an essential element in a materialist analysis (see Leonard, 1986).
Finally, back to locality research. A focus on a locality can - I
would argue should - provide an empirical framework within
which to explore how life-worlds hang together and provide the
medium for a hierarchy of systems. In research terms, a locality,
as a spatially limited zone, defined by some economic indices, is a
window onto wider processes. Wider both in the spatial sense,
and in terms of the move from economic to other social relations.
A focus on culture, or employment, or gender, is a window onto
convergent processes. Despite the claims of some, the choice of a
locality focus has no intrinsic relation to postmodernism.

Notes
1. This paper partly reflects discussions in the Bedminster Hegemony Group.
Thanks to Martin Boddy, Paul Burton, Gill Court, Ray Forrest, Ade Franklin
and Alan Murie for their variously sympathetic or critical observations.
2. Translating this into Giddens language, the life-world would correspond to
the domain of reflexive monitoring, rationalisation, and motivation of
individual actions, while the social systems level is the domain of the
reproduction of the conditions of individual actions (Giddens, 1984: 5).
Critical realists and structurationists share a concern with the connections
between these realms (Bhaskar, 1979; Cohen, 1987).The relationship between
the traditions of research into the systems and life-world dimensions is
nicely discussed in Outhwaite (1987).
3. It is probably worth stressing here that this position is not shared by all British
locality researchers, despite the impression given by some recent claims (see
especially Phil Cooke, 1987a, 1987b, and Neil Smith, 1987, 1988: 151). For
evidence, see the contributions by the CURS research teams in Cooke (Ed.)
(forthcoming) and Lovering and Meegan (Eds.) forthcoming.
4. It is interesting to watch this concept gain academic respectability in Britain,
as its economy and politics grow closer to that of the US. For examples see
John Urry and Scott Lash (1987), or Laclau and Mouffe (1985).

References
Anderson, P. (1984) Modernity and revolution. New Left Review 144: 96 - 113.
Beauregard, Robert A. (1988) In the absence of practice; the locality research
debate. Antipode 20(1): 52-59.
Benton, T. (1984) The rise and fall of structural marxism; Althusser and his influence.
London: Macmillan.
Berman, M. (1984a) All that is solid melts into air. London: Verso.
Berman, M. (1984b) The signs in the street; a response to Anderson. New Left
Review 144: 144 - 123.

POSTMODERNISM, MARXISM, AND LOCALITY RESEARCH

11

Bhaskar, R. (1979) The possibility of naturalism. Brighton: Harvester.

Bhaskar, R. with C. Arthur, T. Benton, G . Elliott, J. Lovering, and P. Osborne
(1988) Philosophical underlabouring. Interlink (Special Issue for the Second
Socialist Conference, Chesterfield 1988) 7: 11- 13.
Blackburn, R. (1988)Raymond Williams and the politics of A New Left. New Left
Review 168: 12 - 24.
Buhle, P. (1987) Marxism in the USA. Verso: London.
Callinicos, A. (1983) Marxism and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cohen, I. A. (1987) Structurationtheory and social praxis. In A. Giddens, and
A. Turner (Eds.) Social theory today. Oxford: Polity Press.
Cooke, P. (1987a) Local capacity and global restructuring; some preliminary results from the CURS research programme. Paper given at the sixth
Urban Change and Conflict Conference, University of Kent at Canterbury
20-23 September. Available from Dept. of Town Planning, University of
Wales Institute of Science and Technology, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF1 3EU.
Cooke, P. (1987b)Clinical inference and geographic theory. Antipode 19(1):69 - 78.
Cooke, P. (1987~)Research policy and review 19. Britains new spatial paradigm:
technology, locality and society in transition. Environment and Planning A 19:
1289- 1301.
Cooke, P. (forthcoming) Introduction to Localities (the collective summary of the
CURS research project). London: Hutchinson.
Davenport, N. (1987) The New Politics of Knowledge; Rortys Pragmatism and
the Rhetoric of the human sciences. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 17: 377 - 94.
Davis, M. (1984) Urban renaissance and the spirit of Postmodernism. N m Left
Review 151: 106 - 114.
Davis, M. (1986) Prisoners of the American Dream. London: Verso.
Elliot, G . (1987) Althusser: The detour of theory. London: Verso.
Giddens, A. (1984) The constitution of society. Oxford: Polity Press.
Geras, N. (1976) The legacy of Rosa Luxemburg. London: Verso.
Graham, J. (1988) Post-modernism and Marxism. Antipode 20(1): 60 - 66.
Gregson, N. (1987) Structuration theory: some thoughts on the possibilities for
empirical research. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 5: 73 - 91.
Harvey, D. (1987)Three myths in search of a reality in urban studies. Environment
and Planning D: Society and Space 5: 367-376.
Jacoby, R. (1973) The politics of subjectivity. New Left Review 79: 37-49.
Jameson, F. (1984) Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of Late Capitalism. New
Left Review 146: 53-93.
Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985)Hegemony and socialist strategy. London: Verso.
Leonard, P. (1986) Personality and ideology: towards a materialist understanding of the
individual. London: Macmillan.
Lovering, J. and Meegan, R. (Eds.) (forthcoming) Restructuring Britain. London:
Hutchinson.
Massey, D. (1984) Spatial divisions of labour. London: Macmillan.
Montgomery, D. (1984) Marxism and utopianism in the USA. New Left Review
146: 123- 128.
Outhwaite, W. (1987) New philosophies of social science: realism, hermeneutics and
critical the0y. London: Macmillan.
Rosak, T. (1970) The making ofu counter culture. London: Faber and Faber.
Sayer, A. (1984)Method in Social Science: a realist introduction. London: Hutchinson.
Sim, S. (1986)Lytotard and the Politics of Antifoundationalism. Radical Philosophy
44:8-13.
Smith, N. (1987) Dangers of the empirical turn; some comments on the CURS
initiative. Antipode 19(1): 59 - 68.

12 JOHN LOVERING

Smith, N. (1988) The region is dead! Long live the region. Political Geography
Quarterly 7(2): 141 - 152.
Urry, J. (1981) The anatomy of capitalist society. Oxford: Polity Press.
Urry, J. and S. Lash (1987) Disorganised capitalism. Oxford: Polity Press.
Saunders, P. and P. Williams (1987). For an emancipated social science. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 5: 427 - 430.