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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 species of art and literature which broke with the sensibilities of ’modernism’ (Berman, 1984a). In the last few years postmodern- ism 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 philos- ophical 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. Graham’s account of the ’confrontation’ between postmodern- ists 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 post- modernist in spirit (see especially Phil Cooke, 1987a and 1987b).It has been claimed that the salience of ’the locality’ has objectively postmodernism. The term was soon extended to cover a diverse t School for Advanced Urban Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 4EA
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Page 1: Antipode Volume 21 Issue 1 1989 [Doi 10.1111%2fj.1467-8330.1989.Tb00176.x] John Lovering -- Postmodernism, Marxism, And Locality Research- The Contribution of Critical Realism to the

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

species of art and literature which broke with the sensibilities of ’modernism’ (Berman, 1984a). In the last few years postmodern- ism 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 philos- ophical 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.

Graham’s account of the ’confrontation’ between postmodern- ists 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 post- modernist in spirit (see especially Phil Cooke, 1987a and 1987b). It has been claimed that the salience of ’the locality’ has objectively

postmodernism. The term was soon extended to cover a diverse

t School for Advanced Urban Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 4EA

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2 JOHN LOVERING

increased as a feature of the emergent ’postmodern spatial para- digm’ (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 mind- sets. 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 possi- bility 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 post- modernism, 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).

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POSTMODERNISM, MARXISM, AND LOCALITY RESEARCH 3

’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 character- istic focus on the experiential and on cultural artefacts. After reading Berman’s brilliant survey, it is hard not to be inspired by the results of an emphasis on modernism, as a ’mode of experi- ence’ of modern life (Berman, 1984a). Graham’s 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-world’ dimension 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 develop- ment of high-culture, the urban environment, aspects of subjec- tive 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 post- modernism’s 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). Berman’s 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 sen- sitive account of ideas and their origins, to a theory of the perma- nence of the kind of ceaseless change characterising ’modernism’. One implication of this particular theory (which is, incidentally,

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just about as ‘totalising’ as it could be), is that the politics of social- ism loses any sense. The cultural conditions and subjective experi- ences upon which socialist impulses are based must, in Berman’s 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 Berman’s 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, postmod- ernism 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, forth- coming).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 fheo y and practice This divergence of purpose around the analysis of subjectivity is not as new as is sometimes suggested. Many of the ideas

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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 counter- culture ideologies in the 1960s (Rosak, 1972: chap. 7). Postmod- ernism’s 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 postmodernism’s 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). Buhle’s recent study of marxism in the USA stresses the persistent influence of religious sensibility, spiritualism, tem- perance, 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 Buhle’s 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 radicalism‘s 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 promin- ent legacy of most 1960s-radicalism seems 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 col- lectivism, 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).

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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 ‘essential- ism’, 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 essential- ism 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 subvert- ing 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 struc- ture 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 elabor- ated 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 geo- graphy. This is remarkable and lamentable (although it may have something to do with the fact that the discipline‘s most famous

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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 contribu- tions 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 interdepen- dence 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 'over- determination', '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

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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 Luxemburg’s con- ception 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. Graham’s 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 asser- tions 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 postmodernism’s preoccupation with empirical detail. This weakness also prevents postmodernism generating a radical politics, rather than a cele-

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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 con- straints 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 postmodernism’s focus on particu- larities.

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 recog- nisably ‘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 postmodern- ism, 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 non- reductionist 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 under- stand 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

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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).

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Anderson, P. (1984) Modernity and revolution. New Left Review 144: 96 - 113. Beauregard, Robert A. (1988) In the absence of practice; the locality research

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Bhaskar, R. (1979) The possibility of naturalism. Brighton: Harvester. Bhaskar, R. with C. Arthur, T. Benton, G . Elliott, J. Lovering, and P. Osborne

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Buhle, P. (1987) Marxism in the USA. Verso: London. Callinicos, A. (1983) Marxism and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cohen, I. A. (1987) Structuration’theory and social praxis. In A. Giddens, and

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nary 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.

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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

Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985) Hegemony and socialist strategy. London: Verso. Leonard, P. (1986) Personality and ideology: towards a materialist understanding of the

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Massey, D. (1984) Spatial divisions of labour. London: Macmillan. Montgomery, D. (1984) Marxism and utopianism in the USA. New Left Review

Outhwaite, W. (1987) New philosophies of social science: realism, hermeneutics and

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

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12 JOHN LOVERING

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