Radical and postmodern? Power, social relations, and regimes of truth in the social construction of alternative economic geographies

This paper is a response to the question ``can radical geography also be postmodern?'' It is argued that the answer to this question is ``yes'' and that this is so because of the contingent, socially constructed nature of the social relations through which the universal but geographically differentiated practices of social reproduction take place. The possibility of radical impulses within postmodern thought is explored through an examination of certain Foucauldian notions of discourse, truth, and power, and Marxian notions of social relations as expressed in the work of Maurice Godelier. A critique of the limited geographical imagination of Foucauldian and Marxist accounts of power provides the context for an argument which suggests that difference is predicated on sameness and that geographies of social reproduction offer one such sameness which is, nevertheless, differentiated by social relations of reproduction. Economic geographies are therefore constructed out of difference and struggle and offer an alternative reading of the economic than that of either Foucault or Marx/Engels. Such socially constructed geographies present the possibilities of resistance to metapractices of power exerted through the discourses of truth and the social relations which are sustained by such discourses. They may be localöalthough they are not necessarily only local. But they are radical in proposing alternative forms of social relations/discourses. They suggestöagain after Foucaultöthat resistance or struggle is itself a radical impulse. It may or may not stem directly from contradictions in prevailing circuits of social reproduction (that is, it may or may not stem from economic geographies) and it may or may not contribute to the displacement of such metapractices but it does express resistance and practise alternatives. Such resistance is, therefore, politically significant whatever its specific material consequences. (1) This question was posed in one of the modulesö``Can radical also be postmodern?''öwithin the `̀ Radical geographyö30 years on'' sessions at the annual conference of the AAG, held in Boston on 27 March 1998. DOI:10.1068/a3248