Call for Papers

Theorising in urban and regional research: negotiating generalisation and particularity

Edited by Kevin R. Cox (The Ohio State University), Judith Clifton (University of Cantabria), Linda Lobao (The Ohio State University) and Emil Evenhuis (University of Southampton).

The focus of this Special Issue will be on how one goes about in urban and regional studies – and research on cities and regions more generally – navigating between the divergent appeals of difference and generality. This problem is at the heart of several current debates. In urban studies a debate has sprung up on ‘the nature of cities’. In a recent provocation Michael Storper and Allen J. Scott (2015) have stated that all cities everywhere are subject to agglomeration economies, and that their dense patterns of land use are their defining feature. They responded explicitly to the increasing influence of Postcolonial critiques, as well as approaches based on Actor Network Theory and Assemblage Theory, which – to various degrees – look to do away with such ‘essentialistic’ and ‘universalising’ claims. These approaches instead foreground the particularity and singularity of processes going on in cities across the world, and take this as the starting point for a complete reformatting of urban theory (e.g. Robinson, 2016). In economic geography – and by extension in regional studies – similar debates have been going on since the late 1990s. On the one side there are those that seek to extend and build on the work undertaken since the 1960s (drawing on Political Economy approaches, and various types of more heterodox schools in economics), trying to understand and critique the spatial economy of ‘the Capitalist System’ and its different manifestations across various regions. While on the other side there are those who want to develop new approaches – taking inspiration from especially Poststructuralism – which leave more room for the idiosyncrasy of individual cases, and for actors’ agency to shape alternative economic spaces (see e.g. Amin and Thrift, 2000; and exchanges in Antipode vol. 33 (2001), no. 2 and Environment and Planning A vol.50 (2018), no. 7).

These debates cover a range of issues of a conceptual sort including: space and place; contextualization and de-contextualization; the global/local relation; questions of home country bias in urban and regional studies; and the idea of ‘theory from the South’. One of the primary motivations for this issue of the journal is to make a start disentangling these issues, and gain greater insight into the various positions one can take within these debates.

There is the fact that in research a home country bias continues to prevail. Likewise the experience of particular cities can be elevated, somewhat uncritically into an ideal type: for example ‘Los Angeles vs Chicago’. Or there again, the experience of some over-researched cities, usually the larger ones, can become representative. Arguments are put forward as if they can be applied elsewhere when that is not the case. De-contextualization remains a problem. Urban theory may also be applied wholesale to rural and suburban contexts. Similarly, attempts to transfer the idea of the growth coalition from the US to Western Europe have faltered. On the other hand, a different sort of de-contextualization is exemplified by the claim that Israel is ‘an apartheid society’. Clearly, this also raises important questions for policy transfer from one place to another.

Another key issue concerns how the tension between difference and the general relates to conceptions of space and geographic scale: to what extent should urban and regional outcomes be understood as the product of a unique conjuncture of actions, events and circumstances, or instead the result of wider systems and processes. Here we touch on questions of 'universality': how 'universal' are globalisation, neoliberalisation, or even ‘the Capitalism System’ itself? Are particular places embedded in a space which is importantly shaped by these large-scale systems and processes? Also then, specific outcomes may nevertheless be seen to reflect and rework such wider systems and processes. The literature on varieties of capitalism for example offers a model where the generalized form of capitalist structures and practices provides a context which is always also differentiated, as places, molded by diverse institutional trajectories and influences, sort, adapt and mobilize in their own particular ways, recursively producing the wider context. Yet alternatively, globalization could be conceived of as something that indeed has a (more or less) ‘universal’ presence, but is some sort of extension of a particular, American-inspired sort of capitalism. Hence, has it been globalization for the US and its British sidekick, rather than for, say, France and Germany, let alone developing countries? Or should we dismiss such claims of ‘universal’ systems and processes altogether. Indeed the late Doreen Massey’s work revived interest in particular places and how we might conceive them without reducing them to mere ‘instances’ of systems and processes; instead focusing on the distinctive ways all sorts of actors, entities, and relationships come together in particular places. Should we even dismiss the postulation of any overarching 'determining' forces and structures altogether; and instead employ a ‘flat ontology’, in which space consists purely of relationships and networks, without any hierarchy between geographic scales?

The above reflections, suggest a research agenda exploring the problem of the general and the particular that would include:

• How to understand the relation to the general. What is the ‘general’ anyway? And how does it relate to the ‘universal’?
• The examination of particular instances of de-contextualization and the over-extension of concepts.
• What is one to make of the assertion that much existing urban and regional theory should be ‘provincialised’? To what extent are experiences of different cities and regions around the world ‘exceptional’? How useful are such claims for stimulating new slants on other places? What does that mean for theorizing large-scale structures and processes, which may appear to have a ‘universal’ presence?
• Understanding scalar relations in a relational way.
• What particular methodologies can be in play? There has been a revival of interest in comparative studies, as in the varieties of capitalism literature, but how does one do them without falling into the trap of overgeneralization? Jenny Robinson (2006, p. 5) has talked about reimagining “comparison as involving the broad practice of thinking cities/the urban through elsewhere (another case, a wider context, existing theoretical imaginations, connections to other places), in order to better understand outcomes and to contribute to strongly revisable broader conceptualizations and wider conversations about (aspects of) the urban”. So what does that entail in practice? Should a more conscious application of the hermeneutic be part of an appropriate methodology?

In other words: An agenda which goes to the heart of theory and method in urban and regional studies, bringing together the overlapping questions of, among other things, scalar relations, space and place and how we might contextualize specific instances. Articles can thus involve theoretical work that pushes the literature in new directions, tackles grey areas or unresolved issues, and demonstrates how missing links may be overcome with integration of other literatures. This includes synthesis pieces that extend the work conceptually. But we are also particularly interested in theoretical work that has a strong empirical foundation that speaks to the debates outlined above; and empirical studies that elaborate, challenge, or otherwise evaluate claims derived from theory from various literatures. Finally, “how to” articles that provide a methodological blue-print for studying the processes by which generalization and context may be more fruitfully integrated, are encouraged.

Guidelines for Submissions

Authors interested in contributing to this special issue are invited to submit Abstracts of up to 400 words by email to Francis Knights at landecon-cjres@lists.cam.ac.uk no later than 1 June 2019. Selected authors will be invited to submit papers following the Editors’ selection from these initial Abstracts. Full papers would be due by 1 September 2019, and all submissions will be subject to the normal peer review process. Accepted papers will be included in the Special Issue, scheduled for publication in late 2020.

References

• Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (2000), ‘What Kind of Economic Theory for What Kind of Economic Geography?’, Antipode, 32, (1), pp. 4-9.
• Robinson, J. (2016) ‘Thinking Cities Through Elsewhere: Comparative Tactics for a More Global Urban Studies’, Progress in Human Geography, 40, (1), pp. 3-29.
• Scott, A. J. and Storper, M. (2015) ‘The Nature of Cities: The Scope and Limits of Urban Theory’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39, (1), pp.1-15.