ontología espacial y explicación

Spatial Ontology and ExplanationAuthor(s): Theodore R. SchatzkiSource: Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 81, No. 4 (Dec., 1991), pp.650-670Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of American GeographersStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2563428 .Accessed: 04/12/2014 13:23

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Spatial Ontology and Explanation Theodore R. Schatzki

Department of Philosophy and Committee on Social Theory, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0027

Abstract. This paper presents an account of spatial ontology and explanation that high- lights a largely ignored dimension of social spatiality: the opening and occupation of places for activity that automatically occurs whenever there is human life. The first part analyzes this space of places on the basis of Heidegger's account of ongoing life, and uses the resulting analysis to describe the spatiality of social formations. The second part analyzes spatial explanation on the basis of this spatial ontology. It (a) argues that the explanation and explanatory uses in social science of the spatial properties of social phenomena do not differ in principle from the explanation and explanatory uses of other features of social life, and (b) defends two existing versions of sociospatial dialectics. Attention is given to the nature of explanation, the character of social causality, and the proper types of explanation in social investigation.

Key Words: social space, social spatiality, space and society, explanation, social explanation, spatial explanation, social causality, realism, sociospatial dialectic.

LTHOUGH social formations such as A economies, religions, and sporting

events are obviously spatial phenomena, much of modern social thought has systematically ignored their spatial characteristics. Responding to this oversight is a recent movement in social theory, found primarily though not exclusively in geography, concerned with the spatial aspects of social phenomena. Mar- ring this development, however, are one-sided theoretical analyses of the spatial nature of social entities and overhasty conceptions of the explanatory roles that the spatial aspects of social life can play in social science.

This essay attempts to overcome some of these oversights. The first part analyzes the spatial nature of social reality. It argues that a more

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 81(4), 1991, pp. 650-670 ? Copyright 1991 by Association of American Geographers

adequate account of social spatiality requires supplementing-not replacing-conceptions of objective space with a notion of social space. The second part analyzes the explanation of the spatial properties of social phenomena and the explanatory roles these properties can play in social science. It argues that the explanation and explanatory uses of such properties are no different in principle from the explanation and explanatory uses of other features of social life. My overall goal is to offer a philosophical account of spatial ontology and explanation that can inform empirical research. The hoped-for utility of this account, accordingly, is two-fold: (1) to advance theoretical discussion of human- social spatiality and its explanation, and (2) to serve as a template through which empirical researchers can examine social spatiality, by identifying new objects for research and of- fering a novel conception of the justification and construction of spatial explanations. None of this means that I think that philosophy has any special claim to be a grounding enterprise. Indeed, no particular discipline has exclusive rights to this status. What is foundational is a cluster of ontological and epistemological issues, with practical and methodological implications, which are not the exclusive province of any currently designated academic discipline and which can be investigated by theoreticians from a range of fields. Philosophy is one of these fields. Hence, it is in the position to develop theses with ramifications for empirical work.

Before proceeding I want to comment briefly on two meta-issues pertinent to my analysis. In first sketching an ontology and then deriving epistemological consequences from it, I con- travene those who would press epistemological (and/or linguistic) questions prior to ontology. My view on the relation of ontology to epistemology is that, just as any ontology presupposes an epistemology, so too every epistemology presupposes an ontology. Neither


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ontology nor epistemology is systematically more fundamental. One or the other is stra- tegically more basic depending on where a theorist chooses to cut into the circle of ontology and epistemology. Of course, it is incumbent upon the theorist to be aware of the ontological or epistemological presuppositions of his or her starting point. I have chosen to begin with ontology, and the epistemological presuppositions of my particular ontology lie in the nature of phenomenological description. It lies be- yond the scope of this paper, however, to examine this presupposition.

All ontologies and epistemologies arise, moreover, in particular sociohistorical circumstances. Some conclude from this fact that sociohistorical investigation and criticism must accompany the formulation or development of such theories. This might seem especially called for in the case of accounts such as mine which purport to sketch universal (though probably not necessary) features of human life. However, it seems to me that if my account is incomplete, inadequate, or parochial, this fact arises less from its sociohistorical embeddedness than from un- successful abstraction and generalization. What we should learn from both the sociohistorical embeddedness of analysis and the inadequacies of earlier theories is not that we should aban- don the search for generality, but rather that we should be conscious of the fallibility of our attempts. It is in this spirit that this work aims to contribute to the best understanding attain- able today of general features of human existence.

Spatial Ontology

Spaces and Society

By way of introduction, I wish to discuss a pair of conjunctions: objective space and social space, and society and space.

The distinction between objective space and social space marks a divide in the conceptual- ization of social spatiality (the spatial nature of social existence). There are two sorts of objective space: absolute and relational (see Gatrell 1983, ch. 1). In its absolute version, space is a self-subsistent, homogeneous, isotropic medium in which objects exist. In its relational version, it is a system of relations among objects and thus not independent of the latter. In ei-

ther rendition, it can be measured by a metric that applies continuously and equally through- out it.

The idea of objective space arose principally in view of and has its first application to physical space, the space composed by or containing physical objects. It applies more widely to the spaces composed by or containing any sort of object. Since social reality embraces a multi- tude of objects, e.g., human beings, tools, and buildings, it exhibits features of objective space. For instance, people occupy spatial positions relative to one another, and their activities are distributed in objective space. Social reality, however, is not merely congeries of objects. This fact suggests that social spatiality might not be exhausted by whatever objective space it encompasses.

In this essay, I will maintain that social spatiality has a second dimension, social space, which is distinct, though not separate, from objective space. Social reality is interrelated human lives (see following section). Social space is the opening and occupation of the "wheres" of human existence that automatically occurs along with interrelated lives. Such a space is intrinsic to such lives. As Heidegger (1978, 171) writes,

The entity which is constituted by being-in-the- world is itself in every case its 'there.'... [The] existential spatiality [of human existence], which thus determines its 'location', is itself grounded in being-in-the-world.... 'Here' and 'yonder' are possible only in a 'there'-that is to say, only if there is an entity which has made a disclosure of spatiality as the being of the 'there.'

Whereas objective space is a medium or set of relations at least to some extent independent of human existence, social space, as the opening and occupation of sites for human existence, is by its nature present only so long as human life occurs. If people were to disappear, physical space alone would be left behind.

The idea that human existence ipso facto constitutes a space is related to the claim that human agency is inherently spatial. What this means is that human agency is always embedded within a space which it shapes and is shaped by. Proponents of this claim usually think of this space as a relational space of social activities. My conception, on the other hand, takes off from Heidegger's idea that human existence always constitutes its "there." This means that human life automatically opens (in Heidegger's


652 Schatzki

language, erschliesst) a nexus of places where it itself occurs., Of course, since social reality is interrelated, rather than individual lives, a person always proceeds through nexuses of places that a plurality of human lives have opened together. Human agency is indeed spatial. The dimensions of this spatiality that make it more than merely objective in character must, however, be recognized.

Since social space is opened by and thus does not exist independently of human lives, it clearly cannot be a self-subsistent medium or substance. Furthermore, since it is a space occupied by human activity, it cannot be a system of relations among such activities. Unfortu- nately, most, though not all, theorists treat social spatiality exclusively as an objective space. According to Andrew Sayer (1985, 53), for instance, all references to social space are in fact references to its constituents because social space is merely an abstraction from the relations between these constituents. For Torsten Higerstrand (e.g., 1970), meanwhile, the space of society is a web of life-paths traversing an objective Euclidean space. Neil Smith (1984, 74- 75), as a final example, contrasts geographical space, the physical space of cities, fields, and hurricanes, with social space, the field of social activities and events, which is a relational space composed by these activities and events. It bears noting that descriptions of social space and of relational objective space can resemble one another:

Giddens is arguing that individuals and societies are not just located in linear time and absolute space but structure time and space socially such that they produce relative configurations of both specific to particular times and places (Gregson 1986, 185).

On both this view and Heidegger's, social spatiality varies over objective space and time in a manner somehow dependent on action. But while, for Giddens, social spatiality is a relational space varying as different developing configurations of social activities that "region- alize" space in changing ways,2 for Heidegger, it is a social space varying as diverse evolving configurations of opened and subsequently occupied places for activity. Note that, because social space is an opening of places for activity (and hence is a "medium" of activity), it is the omnipresent precondition for the developing configurations of activities that partly constitute the relational dimension of social spatiality.

It is important to realize that social space is not experiential space. Experiential space is the spatial character of experience (see Bollnow 1963; Bachelard 1964; Buttimer 1976; Kruse 1974; Tuan 1977; and Waldenfels 1985). Expe- riential space differs from social space because experience is always someone's experience and experiential space is always some individual's experiential space, centered about the individual who serves as the "zero point of [a] personal reference system" (Bollnow 1971, 180) opening onto surrounding regions of relative "near- ness" and "farness," attractiveness and repul- sion, and so on. Social space, in contrast, is not centered about nor does it belong to particular individuals. It is the shared opening and interrelated occupation of places by pluralities of lives. Since many features of social space, for instance, the occupation of particular places, are possible objects of experience, it can, like objective space, be encountered in experience. But since other features, for instance, the opening of most places, are, like objective space, independent of experience, social space is not the space of experience. Social space is not "mental" or "subjective," even though different groups of people can open different nexuses of places at one and the same set of objects. Hence, social space is neither a subjective nor objective space. It lies outside the traditional dualism operating in, for instance, Wer- len 1988 and Entrikin 1991 (though I am not sure whether Entrikin means something more by the expressions 'experience' and 'subjective' than: relative to actors). For parallel reasons, social space must not be equated with conceptualized space, with people's conceptions and images of space (e.g., Sack 1980). As we shall see, conceptions and images of space are among the determinants and components of social space.

On the other hand, my account is a development within humanistic geography insofar as the latter studies the meanings that entities and world have for people. The world Heidegger envisions people inhabiting is largely a practical world of action where meaningfulness is articulated in part as arrays of places. Unlike some types of meaning that the world can contain for people, places form a space-the practical world is a space for activity. My use of 'place,' however, diverges from that of figures such as David Lowenthal, Yi-Fu Tuan, and Denis Cos- grove for whom place is a locus of attachment,



emotion and feeling, which "incorporates the experiences and aspirations of a people" (Tuan 1974, 213), often serves as a center of activity, and through all of this provides meaning to people's lives. On my account, places are simply places to carry out particular activities. They need not incarnate anything, be the object of any particular emotion or attachment, or contain any more meaning than this practical one. (I note that some of Tuan's later work, e.g., the discussion of house and theater in Tuan 1982, converges with my use of 'place' in treating places and spaces primarily as microsites for human activity.) Further, I do not follow those theorists who speak of objects, e.g., landscape elements, as symbols expressive of norms, ide- als, and values (e.g., Cosgrove 1984). Such elements do exist. The objects at which places are anchored (see later discussion), however, do not "symbolize" these places. An object can have a meaning without symbolizing or ex- pressing it. This is true, I believe, of most human artifacts, including words. The meaning such entities have accrue to them from the use people make of them, and only occasionally do they symbolize or directly express these meanings.

A second conjunction, prominent in recent discussions of sociospatial ontology, is space and society. Whereas 'objective space and social space' marks different positions on the proper conception of social spatiality, 'space and society' asks about the relation between social phenomena and their spatiality. The two alternative conceptions of objective space yield different views on this relation.

At one time three decades or so ago, some geographers viewed space as a realm of forms and relations autonomous from and governed by laws making no reference to the social entities that have spatial properties. Space was viewed as a kind of substance that interacts with a second sort of substance, society, to produce concrete social life. In contrast to absolute space, relational space has no independent, substantial nature and is incapable of interacting with social entities. All there is are social entities whose interactions yield space as a pure by-product. Accordingly, there is no reciprocal relation between space and society as in the absolutist construal, only a one-way depen- dence of space on society. Now, it is obvious that the notion of interacting substances does not apply to social space. One-way depen-

dence also cannot be the basic relation between society and space since the opening (and occupying) of places by human life, as we shall see, cannot be reduced to relations among human activities and artifacts.

Heidegger (1978, 146) writes that the world is not in space; rather, space is in the world. A similar relation holds between space and society. Society is not in space, as the absolutists have it; nor, for that matter, does space reduce to relations among social entities, as the rela- tionalists maintain. Rather, space is in society. In the language of this essay: social space is in social reality. That is, this space is opened and occupied with and as social reality, with and as people's interrelated lives.

As I will detail later, my account concurs with both the currently popular idea that space is socially produced and the often accompanying idea that space is the medium of social production (e.g., Soja 1985). Advocates of these ideas usually treat space as a system of relations among social activities and artifacts. When it is said that social entities produce space, what is meant is that social entities bring about objective configurations of these phenomena. Al- though true, this claim covers up the social 11production" of social space: that social life is itself an opening of places for activity, one result of which is these objective configurations.

Social Space

Social Reality. Elsewhere I have argued that social reality is interrelated ongoing lives (Schatzki 1988a). In the present context, it will be simplest to introduce the idea via Heideg- ger's philosophy, summarize its content, and then discuss its implications for spatiality. I rely on Heidegger's analysis of human existence because, in my opinion, though I cannot justify this here, it offers the most accurate analysis available of the universal features of moment- to-moment, lived human existence. What I am attempting is to couple his analysis with the claim that social reality is interrelated lives and to trace the consequences that follow from the resulting account of social reality for a variety of ontological and epistemological issues.

In Being and Time, Heidegger writes: "The happening of history is the happening of being- in-the-world" (440; translation altered). Being- in-the-world is Heidegger's analysis of ongoing


654 Schatzki

life, the passage of human existence. It is analyzed as an ongoing continuously-being-at- tuned-to-and-interacting-with entities and people encountered in the series of local settings in which one from moment to moment exists. According to Heidegger, history takes place as ongoing lives. It consists, accordingly, in the phenomena comprising these lives, e.g., local settings, attunement to and interaction with things. Unfortunately, Heidegger confined his attention mostly to the nature of individual existence and did not pursue the idea that, because individual existences are interrelated, historical (social) reality consists not only in ongoing life but, more broadly, in interrelated lives. Formulated in Heidegger's language, social reality is people's interrelated being-in an interconnected world.

To develop this analysis, consider ongoing life to be a series of actions, taking place in local settings and structured by a range of what I will call 'action-governing factors.' Actions include not only interventions in the world but omissions of intervention as well as some oc- currences of thinking. The action-governing factors that structure the continuous being-di- rected-toward-and-performing one action after another that pervades the stream of moment-to-moment existence are: ends, ideas (including concepts and thoughts), moods and emotions, known states of affairs, projects and tasks, rules, paradigms, and customs. Sets of these factors structure action in the sense of specifying why, at a given moment in a particular situation, an actor performed a particular action. Ends are states of existence for the sake of which a person is willing to act. 'Rules' refer to explicitly formulated directives and instruc- tions, while 'paradigms' refer to ways of being and acting that are exemplary for some group of people. By 'customs,' I mean widespread, accepted ways of acting into the practice of which people are "socialized." The other items on the list require no explication. Three points should be noted about these factors. First, my simply listing them does not mean that they themselves are not in need of theorization. Second, factors of these types can govern someone's action without he or she being aware of knowing of them. And third, these factors are not "mental" (or "subjective") entities in any traditional sense of "mental." This means that social space, which I will later describe as

a product of these factors, is again not a "mental" space. It is a space opened by and as interrelated lives, not something tucked away in people's minds.

Now, since social reality is interrelated ongoing lives, one of its components is the interrelations among lives. The idea of such interrelations can be conveyed with a few examples. An important type of interrelation is the interpersonal molding of governance. This is the way action-governing factors are distributed across lives. An important subtype of interpersonal molding is commonality: the same factor governing what each of a plurality of people does. Two examples of interrelations in the realm of setting are people responding to the same phenomenon in a particular setting (e.g., schoolchildren responding to the teach- er's entrance into the classroom) and physical connections between settings such as bridges and the telephone system. A final example of interrelations is chains of action, which are series of actions, each member of which is a response to the previous member or to a change the (possibly unknown) previous member brought about in the world.

In sum, social reality is a multiplicity of series of interlinking actions, governed by inter- and intra-personal structures of action-governing factors, and occurring in interconnected settings. Three consequences of this view important for this essay should be noted straightaway. First, what this viewpoint excludes from social reality is all relations and structures that are something in addition to or distinct from features of interrelated lives. An example is the abstract social relations utilized in many structural-functionalist and marxist accounts as the building blocks of social structures. On my account, social relations are either names for sets of features of interrelated lives or types under which such sets can be subsumed. Second, social reality is to a great extent local. Apart from communications and other physical connections between settings, all events and features of this reality exist within the perceptual and interventionary purview of human beings. Hence, third, whenever an investigator studies social reality, what she studies are mostly sec- tors and aspects of the manifold of local real- ities. This fact does not reduce social science to the scrutiny of particular local happenings, because a second essential component of social



investigation is the construction of surveyability-providing overviews of these happenings. In any case, the interest social science has in localness is identical with its interest in social affairs. It is not interested in local contexts only because social reproduction and socialization take place there (Pred 1981, 6; cf. Thrift and Pred 1981, 279).

Social Spatiality. Since social reality is interrelated ongoing lives, the spatiality of interrelated lives is the spatiality of this reality. We can begin our investigation of social spatiality with the built environment.

The built environment (including the natural environment confined within it) must not be viewed first as a physical environment. Rather, it is part of social reality in the first place as an organized nexus of places and paths. A place is a place to X, e.g., a bed is a place to sleep, a table a place to eat, and a bus stop a place to catch the bus. As these examples demonstrate, places are defined by reference to human activities. They are anchored, moreover, in built, modified, or naturally occurring objects; a place to X always exists where some object(s) exists. What places can exist where, consequently, is conditioned and constrained by the properties of objects. Paths, moreover, are a particular type of place: places on which to reach Y from X (routes). Like all places, they are anchored in objects.

Paths and places are organized in turn into larger entities: settings, locales, and regions. A setting is a loosely or tightly bundled totality of places. Examples from modern Western society are street corners, factory assembly-line floors, classrooms, and mountaintops. In general, since places are anchored in objects, settings are anchored in configurations of objects. Conse- quently, what settings can exist where is constrained and conditioned by the properties and objective spatial relations of such configurations. Often, moreover, settings, for instance those in an apartment building, are demarcated by barriers that limit experiential and mobile penetrability. In the absence of such barriers, for instance in a park, settings can still often be identified and differentiated by reference to either organizational structures or the bundles of activities that are to occur in them. Orga- nizational structure is the way objects are laid out in a setting (e.g., an assembly-line floor) to establish an organized array of places at which

actions that will, need, or are supposed to occur there can be performed efficiently, in the proper sequence, and in a coordinated manner.

Just as places are organized into settings, settings are connected to and organized with one another into locales, and these in turn into regions. Examples of locales and regions are, respectively, factories, nomadic settlements, villages, parks, and urban sprawls, hunting pre- serves, cities. Like places and settings, locales and regions are anchored in objects. Hence, again, the possibilities of locales and regions are conditioned by the properties of, and the objective spaces formed by, objects. For these reasons, together with the fact that people build structures to be the anchors of particular places and settings, the aggregation of complexity and scale marked by the progression from places to regions is matched by an aggregation of complexity and scale in the realm of objects and objective space. It should be noted that the division of the built environment into regions, locales, and settings is not relative to the interests of scientists. Even though settings and locales are sometimes indistinct, and even though the term 'region' encompasses built environments stretching from cities to metro- politan and agricultural areas, the built environment is articulated in itself into these entities.

Places, settings, locales, and regions are where human life takes place. Taken together as an overlapping, hierarchical order of "wheres," they comprise the "space" where interrelated lives transpire. One can think of this order as "Imaking room" for human lives. As Heidegger (1971, 157) writes, "in dwelling, [people] persist through spaces by virtue of their stay among things and locations." In his view, buildings and things are locations which open up spaces for human activity. Despite formulaic similarities, this view must not (pace Gregory 1989, 194) be assimilated to Hagerstrand's (1973) conception of space as a "provider of room" since the space Hagerstrand has in mind is objective physical space (e.g., Gregson 1986). On the other hand, since this overlapping, hierarchical order of 11wheres" has a nodal structure, this conception of spatiality does dovetail with Soja's (1989, 148) description of the spatiality of social life as a 11multilayered system of socially created nodal regions, a configuration of differentiated and hierarchically organized locales."


656 Schatzki

As indicated, the space of places is anchored in and conditioned by configurations of objects along with the objective spaces these objects compose. Moreover, since places can be at- tributed the locations of their anchors, social reality contains a distribution of places in objective space. Social space, however, cannot be treated as a relational space. No amount of relations among a set of objects, including human beings, suffices to establish that particular places or settings are anchored at these sets. Rather, as I will discuss shortly, human lives are what is responsible for what places exist where. A for- tiori, a totality of places does not reduce to a combination of relations among objects. Social space and objective space are distinct but connected dimensions of social spatiality.

Although social space is clearly not a relational space, it does resemble absolute space in being a "medium" in which entities of a particular sort (activities) occur. The parallel col- lapses, however, for at least two important reasons. First, while absolute space is homogeneous and continuous, a nexus of places is inhomo- geneous, overlapping, and at times discontinuous. Second, while absolute space exists independently of the objects occurring in it, the space of places is not apart from the human lives that open and occupy it.

We can now concretize this idea that social space is opened and occupied by lives. Human lives open places at which they themselves transpire because what places are anchored where depends on actions and action-governing factors. Places depend on these phenomena in two ways. First, the environment and its objective space is usually intentionally constructed to anchor particular arrays of places, settings, and locales. This occurs whenever people build environments with an eye to their own ends and projects and/or the ends, projects, and actions that future occupants of the built structures will pursue and carry out. But the existence of places depends on people in a way much more immediate than this. The "wheres" at which human life happens are continuously opened by the lives that occupy them (see Heidegger 1978, sects. 22-24; also Mer- leau-Ponty 1962, part 1, ch. 3). This means that what places exist at any moment at any set of objects depends on the ends, projects, actions, and also moods, rules, and ideas of the people living amid them. Depending on a person's moods and thoughts, a cohort's desk can be a

place to confide a secret, to upstage a colleague, or to further a design. Similarly, an open expanse between two assembly lines can be a place to gossip, to plan a strike, or to harass a maligned colleague, depending on the worker's moods, ideas, ends, etc. Of course, tre- mendous continuities and commonalities in the factors governing lives ensure continuity and commonality in the arrays of places within which people live. What places and paths occur at a given configuration of anchors can also depend on what actions are performed there. "I'm waiting, in my room, which is now a waiting room. When I go to bed it's a bedroom" (At- wood 1987,66). Consequently, changes in what places are anchored where result both from fluctuations in which lives transpire amid the objects involved and from transformations in those lives. What places exist in a given arena, therefore, can differ from those that were in- tended by its planners, builders, or managers.

We can fill out the idea that human lives occupy the space of places in the following way. Actions and action-governing factors not only are responsible for opening places, but also are distributed among places: actions are found at the places where they are performed, while factors are found at the places where the actions they govern occur. The project of building a tree-house, for instance, might be found at a series of places and settings: the tree, a thick branch, the hardware store, the dining room table, the walkway from the porch to the backyard, and so on. In general, the occupation of places by human lives can be represented as an overlapping distribution of actions, factors, and interrelations among arrays of places and settings. Notice that since factors and actions determine places and settings, they help determine their own spatial location.

In sum, the social space that interrelated, ongoing lives (social reality) comprise, the opening and occupancy of places, is a distribution of factors, actions, and interrelations among arrays of places, paths, and settings themselves determined by actions and factors. "To be somewhere," accordingly, is to help constitute social space (cf. Norberg-Schulz 1971, 34): it is for one's life to determine places and to be a distribution of factors and actions among them.

Hence, it is possible to agree with the in- creasingly popular slogan that human beings make their own geography, just as they make their own history. We must recognize, how-



ever, the plurality of ways in which people make geography. They do so (1) by performing the activities and producing the artifacts and built environments, relations among which constitute relational spaces encompassing activities and objects or objects alone; (2) by specifying and enforcing both that specific places and settings are anchored at particular configurations of objects and that certain ends, projects, and actions are realized at particular places and settings; (3) by virtue of actions and action-governing factors continuously determining arrays of places; and (4) by occupying places. Social spatiality evolves not only when people build and transform their environment, anchor places at specific locations, and prescribe factors and actions, but also in tandem with changes in their actions, moods, ends, and projects and along with the trajectories of their lives. Of course, it is a bit misleading to speak of the determination of places by actions and factors as a "making" of social space. Human lives in- trinsically and constantly open a space of places without anyone having to make it. This space, moreover, is the condition of all other forms of making. Human beings make their own geography within the geography that their lives have always already opened for them.

Social Phenomena. To close this section, I will use the account of social space just elaborated to analyze the spatiality of social phenomena. Since social reality is interrelated ongoing lives, what there is to it is elements of and interrelations among lives (where by 'elements' I mean actions, factors, objects, places, and settings). Social phenomena are by definition parts or aspects of social reality. They consist, accordingly, in elements and interrelations, i.e., what there is in the world to such phenomena is sets of these items.

The most prominent type of social phenomenon is social formations, which are states of human coexistence. (For brief remarks on the second most prominent, social structures, see Schatzki 1990.) Examples are economies, wars, governments, and groups. Since they are by definition parts of social reality, they consist in sets of elements of and interrelations among lives. More specifically, they consist in usually discontinuous subconfigurations of the sum- total of organized places and settings, together with collections of actions, factors, and interrelations, distributed among places and settings. These subconfigurations and collections

usually form noncentered mosaics of nodes and peripheries. Notice that they can also coincide and overlap. It should be pointed out that expressions designating social formations are either: (1) names for combinations of elements and interrelations, e.g., American government, English economy, Pittsburgh Penguins; (2) types under which such combinations can be subsumed, e.g., racial prejudice, government op- pression, mass hysteria; or (3) constructions upon measures of states of affairs themselves consisting in elements and interrelations, e.g., Gross National Product, the multiplier (for further discussion, see Schatzki 1988a). As this list suggests, the only terms permissible in social investigation are those the use of which does not imply that there is anything more to social reality than interrelated lives. An example of an impermissible term is 'social relation' as utilized in many marxist and structural-functional accounts.

Since a social formation is a cutout of social reality and the spaces this reality constitutes, it has an inherent spatiality defined by and as this cut: the distribution of its constitutive actions, factors, places, and interrelations among a particular configuration of places and settings. Note that the spatiality of a social formation is also its spatial location in social reality. That is, a social formation is located where its constitutive elements and interrelations are (cf. Ruben 1985, ch. 2).

Spatial Explanation

Explanation in General

One prominent characterization of explanations is as answers to questions of the form, or to questions that can be recast without loss of inquisitory intent in the form: Why is it so? One obvious difficulty with this definition is that it does not cover everything we call an explanation, e.g., an explanation of a word's meaning. Defining explanations as answers to a type of question, however, promotes an el- egant differentiation between different cog- nitive achievements in social science. While explanations are answers to why questions and descriptions answers to queries of the form, What happened?, interpretations are responses to requests, What does it mean?, and


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portrayals to those of the form, What is it like to X? (On such a typology, see Runciman 1983.) If we accept this rough-and-ready definition of explanation, then social explanations are answers to questions of the form, Why this social phenomenon?

A mark of the theory of social reality outlined in the first part of this essay is that certain features of this reality are responsible for how things are there. These features are action-governing factors and three types of causal transaction (see next section). Since these factors and transactions are what is responsible for social affairs, descriptions of them supplying answers to why questions about social phenomena are true explanations of these phenomena. To the extent, therefore, that truth is a goal of social inquiry, proffered explanations of social affairs should describe these factors and transactions. Of course, since explanatory power (the ability to dissolve a why question) is dependent upon things such as the interests of those seek- ing explanations, disciplinary frameworks ab- sorbed in education/training, moods, and general intellectual-cultural presuppositions (see, e.g., van Fraassen 1980; Kuhn 1962; and Mann- heim 1936, ch. 5), descriptions of these items might fail to possess explanatory power. Nev- ertheless, true explanations are of this form.

Thinking of explanations as descriptions of the factors and transactions responsible for social phenomena implies that explanations are descriptions put to a certain use: the answering of why questions (see Oakeshott 1933, ch. 2). This conception of explanation is an alternative to the two that Andrew Sayer (1982, 1984) has identified as the explanatory options open to spatial science: generalization and abstraction. 'Generalization' refers to the "covering-law" model which views an explanation as the de- duction of a description of the phenomenon under explanation (the explanandum) from a statement of law plus a statement of initial conditions. 'Abstraction' refers to the more recent abstract realist philosophy developed by Roy Bhaskar (1979, 1986) which construes an explanation of a social event as the reconstruction of the set of abstract, law-governed, and mutually-influencing "generative" mechanisms (constituting the "causal powers" of social entities) that combined to produce it. Despite the manifold differences between these two conceptions, they agree in viewing explanations as demonstrations that the explanandum was re-

quired given certain laws or conjunctions thereof.

In contrast, social explanations, as I construe them, are descriptions of the causal transactions and configurations of action-governing factors which are actually responsible for the to-be-explained social phenomenon. (I will refer to configurations of factors as the "structure of intelligibility.") Explanations exhibit the place that the explanandum occupied in the nexuses of causality and intelligibility in the world (for a parallel position vis-A-vis explanations in natural science, see Salmon (1984)). They are descriptions of the actual world, not law-based deductions or con junctorial reconstructions of it. So they do not imply that things were required to occur as they did. In fact, since causality and intelligibility are not governed by laws, laws have no role, at least theoretically speaking, in social explanation. Pace Sayer, spatial science is not faced with an either-or between positivism and abstract realism.

Social Causality

By 'social causality' I mean the ways, apart from merely physical processes, in which events and states of affairs3 bring about states of affairs and events in social reality. (For justification and elaboration, see Schatzki 1988b.) Causal transactions in social life can be catalogued into three types: actions cause states of affairs by making them happen, states of affairs cause actions by inducing people to act, and states of affairs cause actions by determining which factors govern them.4 I will refer to the third type of transaction as the "molding of behavior." Note that all three types pertain to action and either its determinants or consequences.

For anyone unfamiliar with Humean skepti- cism about causality, it is obvious that acting is one way in which states of affairs are brought about in social life. In cleaning a room, writing a paper, or raking leaves, a person intervenes in the world, brings about changes, and experiences him- or herself making things happen. This form of causality is so obvious that nothing more need be said about it.

A second type of causal transaction occurs when people respond to states of affairs. Con- sider a chain of actions, which is a series of actions each of which is a response to the pre-



vious member or to a change in the world the (possibly unknown) previous member brought about (e.g., boxers responding to one another's jabs and parries). Such a chain embodies causality in the sense that each preceding member leads to and gives rise to the succeeding member, and this "leading and giving rise to" is a type of bringing about. It differs, of course, from the "making happen" sort of bringing about manifested in action. If I swat you with a bat, I may make you fall to the ground. But I might also induce you to parry the blow with a glove. In leading you to respond in this way, my action brings about and thus causes yours. Of course, this second sort of causality occurs more widely than in chains of action alone. It exists whenever a state of affairs induces someone to perform an action.

The third type of causality is the molding of behavior. It exists whenever a person's experience or acquisition of knowledge is responsible for particular factors governing his or her subsequent behavior. Witnessing a dramatic rescue, for instance, might make someone subsequently seek to be a firefighter. Like causal transactions of the second sort, those of the third occur when lived-through (and known) phenomena cause actions. But, whereas causes of the second type are phenomena that induce responses, those of the third sort are phenomena that help bring about that particular factors govern subsequent action. Biological and neu- rophysiological factors might also help bring this about.

I claim that social causality is exhausted by these three types of transactions. There are no further causal transactions, for instance, ones directly linking either social phenomena or social structures or ones otherwise linking social structures to action. Social change is caused neither by social goals and needs, contradictions between the forces and relations of production, conjunctions of social structures, the operation of generative mechanisms, or the im- peratives of system maintenance. Or, more precisely stated: such phenomena can cause social affairs only if they figure in causal transactions of the three described sorts. Let us consider how this might work.

Social formations and structures cannot literally intervene in the world and make changes happen in the way people can. They can, however, be causes of the second or third types since they can induce responses or be some-

thing the experience/knowledge of which molds behavior. For instance, John might respond to a U.S. Senate debate on restoring the tax-exempt status of interest on individual re- tirement savings accounts by writing an impas- sioned letter to his senator. In this example, the congressional debate causes John's action by inducing him to perform it. Two points must be made about this sort of case. First, John is able to respond to the debate only if he has the concept of a Senate debate as well as knowledge of this particular one. Second, what determines whether John responds to the debate as opposed to the particular speakers he heard on television is his understanding of what he responds to. If John understands the Senate deliberations to be what he is responding to, what caused him to act was not the speakers he watched but what he learned from what he watched: that the Senate is debating restora- tion of the tax-exempt status of a type of interest. In general, when a person, after experiencing actions and states of affairs, responds to something that helps constitute a wider social phenomenon, the response is to the wider phenomenon, not the experienced actions and states of affairs, only when the person understands that the response is to that phenomenon.

As for the third type of causality, when a social phenomenon is sufficiently localized in time and space that a person can live through all of it, e.g., a family squabble, a great athletic feat, or a dramatic rescue, then the phenomenon itself causes whatever molding of behavior results from experiencing it. Usually, however, the actions and states of affairs a person experiences are parts of dispersed social phenomena such as governments and economic systems. Whenever behavior is molded through such experiences, the wider phenomenon, and not the particular actions and states of affairs, will be the cause only when the fact that these particular items are part of the dispersed phenomenon plays a role in their effect on action. This will usually require that the actor concerned have knowledge and the concept of the social phenomenon in question. So, for example, if Zico's missed penalty kick puts Jose in a rage for the following week, it is probably Brazil's loss to France that effects this, since the fact that Zico's shot is part of the Brazilian side's performance most likely plays a role in the effect the missed shot has on him.


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I claim that the above circumstances are the only ones in which social phenomena play a causal role in social life. In particular, the mere fact that a response-inducing or behavior- molding action or state of affairs helps constitute a wider social phenomenon does not imply that this wider phenomenon causes behavior. Actions and states of affairs help constitute indefinite numbers of social phenomena. So, if the social phenomena constituted by causally efficacious actions and states of affairs were themselves causally efficacious, any given action would be caused by an indefinite number of phenomena. This result would of course ren- der the notion of causality useless. Fortunately, the discussion in the previous paragraphs thwarts this conclusion by describing conditions under which wider social phenomena are causally efficacious.

It is still possible for social formations to cause one another, but they do so only by working through individuals in the above described ways. Simplifying, one formation causes another when in these ways it causes individuals to perform the actions bringing about and constituting the other. Juvenile delinquency in U.S. ghettos, for instance, is caused by, among other things, ma- terial deprivation, a hostile world, easy drug money, and flashy lifestyles because these are among the central phenomena (1) to which youth respond in performing and (2) through the experience of which is molded the performance of the actions constituting teenage delinquency.

The foregoing account of causality contra- venes those accompanying the two explanatory models Sayer offers to spatial science. For "generalization" causality implies universal succes- sion: 'a causes b' implies that there is a law to the effect that phenomena of a's type are always followed by phenomena of b's type. With- out going into details, my argument against this view is that causality exists when things bring other things about, and the ways in which things bring things about in social reality are not law- governed. For "abstraction," on the other hand, causality is the bringing about of events by sets of abstract, mutually-influencing generative mechanisms. This school of thought claims, further (see Bhaskar 1979, ch. 2), that the generative mechanisms governing social events arise from the properties of systems of social relations (where social relations are not between particular individuals but between social posi-

tions and practices, e.g., the relation between Capitalist and Worker). Against this position, it can be argued that since it is not obvious how social relations and mechanisms link up to the factors and causal transactions immediately determining action, it is unclear how they can "generate" action by causing it (for elaboration, see Schatzki 1990).

Bhaskar and his followers can be interpreted as claiming that generative mechanisms govern actions not by causing them but instead by de- limiting possibilities of action. (It does not matter for the present essay whether "making possible" is a type of causality.) In my 1990 article, I point out that, so interpreted, Bhaskar's generative mechanisms are really theoretical claims of the form: when such-and-such alone is the case, the only possible course of action is so- and-so. However, because real circumstances are never simply the ones specified in such claims, that so-and-so would be the sole pos- sibility if the specified circumstances alone were the case has no specifiable bearing on what is possible in real circumstances. So these mechanisms cannot govern action in the real world by restricting possibilities. There are further problems with the idea that social relations re- strict possibilities even when such relations are analyzed, in line with Giddens's (1979, 1984) conception of structure, as sets of resources and rules. For example, there are strong reasons for believing that rules of the implicit sort into which Giddens and Bhaskar analyze social relations do not exist.

It is true of course that people face limited fields of possibilities. What delimits a person's possibilities, however, are neither generative mechanisms, abstract social relations, nor implicit rules. Most generally but strictly speaking, a person's possibilities are determined by what others might do, by the factors that might govern his or her own behavior, by practical skills, and by certain features of the world such as physical and communications connections between settings, the layout of the built environment, the properties and possible uses of man- made or natural objects/processes, biological facts, and space-time packing constraints (cf. HaIgerstrand 1975). A crucial feature of the de- limitation of possibilities is that something does not delimit possibilities on its own. What possibilities it opens and closes depend on the ends, knowledge, moods, and other factors governing the individuals for whom it does this. One



and the same phenomenon, therefore, might and usually does open/close off different possibilities for different people.

One must tread carefully with the notion of a restricted field of possibilities. Those open to people are almost always wider than this notion suggests. In any set of circumstances, certain actions are impossible. What is possible, however, is extensive since what others might do and which factors might govern a person's own activity are manifold. Of course, an analyst can construct a reduced field of possibilities. What people are most likely to do, including what they habitually or customarily do, is consider- ably narrower than what they might do. So if a person's possibilities are viewed as depending on what others are likely to do, her field of possibilities narrows. If, moreover, she pursues socially acceptable ends and acts deliberately, efficiently, and intelligently in doing so, she will enjoy, in any set of circumstances, a range of possibilities further restricted to those open to a "rational" person. So an investigator might analyze social life with the idea of restricted fields of rational possibilities which reflect how people are likely to act.

One must still be cautious in employing this concept. The extent to which actual people are rational is an empirical matter. Moreover, a field of rational possibilities is never as narrow as one. Only a lack of imagination leads an investigator to think otherwise. Most importantly, this concept can lead an investigator (or actor) to forget the inventiveness and plasticity of human activity. The means people hit on, the in- novations they think up, their behavior in try- ing, desperate, or novel circumstances-such phenomena are unpredictable and often sur- prising. In retrospect we can usually account for them, but pre facto, they sometimes are not counted among the rational or wider possibilities. Hence, while it is true in all situations that certain possibilities are admitted and others ex- cluded, we must not be overly confident of our representations of which these are. When we claim that the rational possibilities are such and such, rational and nonrational actors will constantly transcend or supplement them, thereby limiting the usefulness of our representations in analyzing social life. And we must never forget that because restricted fields of possibilities reflect assumptions about rationality and likely behavior, the realm of actual possibilities is also wider.

Types of Explanation in Social Science

Social explanations are descriptions of the features of social reality responsible for social phenomena. Since these features are causal transactions and the structure of intelligibility, there are two basic types of explanation in social science: causal explanation and intelligibility explanation. The causal explanation of a social phenomenon documents the causal transactions bringing it about. An intelligibility explanation of an action or set of actions lays out the factors governing it. In advocating intelligibility explanations, I link onto a tradition stretching at least from Dilthey that has opposed the hegemony of causal explanation in social science. I do not, however, agree with the view prevalent in this tradition, even among some of its current members including Peter Winch, Clifford Geertz, and Charles Taylor, that causal explanation has little or no role to play in social investigation. In any case, intelligibility explanations of wider social phenomena are descriptions of the factors governing their constitutive actions. All explanations in social science should be mixes of explanations of these two sorts.

Causal explanations of all aspects of social reality are the same in form: descriptions of the causal transactions responsible for the actions, factors, objects, and places constituting the explanandum. Of course, most social phenomena, e.g., stock market crashes, Napoleon's rise to power, suicide rates, and modern Western cap- italism are composed of extremely large numbers of components. Even if it were possible to describe exhaustively the complex nexuses of causal transactions giving rise to these components, such descriptions could not dissolve perplexities about why the phenomena concerned exist (no one could take in the descriptions). The practical task of causal explanation in social science, consequently, is to fashion overviews of causal nexuses that condense these nexuses into surveyable form. In carrying out this task, an investigator may use several strat- agems. For instance, she might identify which of the phenomenon's components are typical, central, distinctive, or constitutive of its origin, and aim to document the causal transactions responsible for these alone. She might also describe only those causal transactions (or types


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thereof) which typically or centrally brought about the phenomenon or those of its components upon which she focuses. In outline, the procedure of constructing causal explanations contains the following stages: the investigator must first identify the components of the phenomenon under explanation and judge which of these to focus on. She must then uncover the actions and states of affairs responsible for the members of the subset. Fi- nally, in order to construct an overview of the causal nexus responsible for the phenomenon, she must judge5 which of these actions and states of affairs are universal, typical, or salient. The entire process is hampered, of course, by limited information; and it is not necessary either to carry out completely a prior stage before executing a subsequent one or to proceed through these stages in the order outlined. An investigator will instead usually move back and forth among them.

Social formations can be cited in the causal explanation of a social phenomenon whenever they are either what people respond to in performing, or that through the experience of which is molded the performance of, the actions constituting the phenomenon. Whether they are cited depends on the judgments of typicality, saliency, centrality, and so on with which overviews are constructed. Since social phenomena have no further role in causality, they have no additional role in causal explanation. In particular, for reasons sketched in the previous section, the mere fact that causally efficacious actions and states of affairs help constitute a social phenomenon does not imply that that phenomenon is itself causally efficacious. This does not imply that social phenomena play a negligible role in causal explanation. On the contrary, people often respond to social states of affairs and are molded by the social phenomena through which they live.

Intelligibility explanations of actions and sets thereof are descriptions of the action-governing factors structuring them. When the explanandum is a social phenomenon composed of numerous actions, the investigator should identify which of its constitutive actions are central, typical, or distinctive and focus upon the factors governing them alone. Then, as in the case of causal explanation, she should fashion an overview of these factors, judging which of them are essential, salient, or distinctive. In

some cases an investigator will mention but a single factor judged to be most crucially de- terminative of a large number of actions, e.g., the claim that Americans turned against the Vietnam war in the belief that it was unjustified. Social phenomena can serve as the explanantia of intelligibility explanations whenever they are objects of the factors that govern the actions under scrutiny, e.g., when a person performs an action because he or she knows something about a particular social phenomenon, or when someone aims to bring about or to prevent one. It should be clear that the procedure of constructing intelligibility explanations parallels that pertaining to causal explanations.

In sum, we can define a complete explanation of a social phenomenon as an overview description of (1) the actions and states of affairs, including social phenomena, that bring about, and (2) the factors governing the performance of, the actions and other items constituting the phenomenon. Such a description provides surveyability over the nexuses of causality and intelligibility determining the phenomenon. Explanation does not require laws, generalizations, or invocations of abstract causal mechanisms. It simply requires overviews of actuality.

I will close this section by relating my analysis of social explanation to an empiricist distinction between behavioral and structural explanations which is widespread in contemporary spatial science. I will show that these two types of explanation are not independent of one another and are in fact two sides of a more com- prehensive "behavioral" approach. I will focus on the representative formulations found in Wekerle and Rutherford (1989).

For Wekerle and Rutherford, the behavioral approach focuses on the characteristics of individuals responsible for how they act, while the structural approach focuses on characteristics of the environment within which they do so. They write: "[our focus] ... permits attention to the behavior [i.e., actions] of individuals and groups within the labor force, at the same time as it allows an examination of the environmental context to which they are responding" (162). As this quotation suggests, the distinction between behavioral and structural explanations is not an either-or: complete explanations of people's lives must combine both approaches. This is obvious from the perspec-



tive of the current essay. The behavioral approach corresponds to intelligibility explanation, while the structural approach can be assimilated to causal explanation; and a complete explanation of action always requires a grasp of the factors governing it (behavioral) as well as the worldly states of affairs determining it (structural). The behavioral and structural approaches are really two sides of a "behavioral" approach construed more broadly as the study of the determinants of action. A central thesis of this essay is that all social explanations are behavioral in this sense.

The structural approach can be described dif- ferently, viz., as the study of the determination of constrained fields of possibilities. In such an approach, states of affairs are examined as determinants not of actions but of possibilities. For example, Wekerle and Rutherford state that their work combines -the structural and behavioral approaches because it joins a concern with the determination of "specific environmental opportunities and constraints" to a concern with "the behavioral issue of how actual wom- en respond to" these (150). As discussed, however, which possibilities a state of affairs delimits depends on the factors governing behavior (moods, ends, etc.). So part of the object of the structural approach are the phenomena stud- ied by the behavioral approach. The two approaches are not independent.

Of course, the structural approach will also examine what is responsible for the states of affairs that delimit possibilities. Since it should do this by fashioning overviews of the actions, factors, and states of affairs responsible for these states, this component of the structural task also pursues a generally behavioral strategy. For instance, Wekerle and Rutherford depict "structural" analyses of industrial location as studying the states of the world to which planners and executives respond in choosing industry sites (144-46). In these studies, a state of affairs which delimits job possibilities for workers (industry location) is itself explained in a behavioral manner by examining what determines the actions giving rise to it. These studies only look like they focus on "structural" as opposed to "behavioral" ingredients because the action-governing factors, in conjunction with which states of affairs determine planners' and executives' decisions, go unmentioned as they are so obvious, e.g., the goals of making much

or sufficient profit. There is only one approach to social explanation: the more broadly construed behavioral approach that focuses on both the factors and states of affairs determining action.

Spatial Explanation

Explanations of spatial phenomena are of the same form as explanations of social phenomena generally, for a spatial phenomenon is a social phenomenon. It is the spatial aspects or form of some social phenomenon. Thus, when an investigator seeks to explain a spatial phenomenon, he or she seeks to explain why some social phenomenon has its particular spatial aspects or form. A social scientist interested in industrial location, for instance, might seek to explain the spatial pattern or distribution of industrial sites. The explanation of this pattern is of the same form as the explanation of any other aspect of industrial location, for it is an explanation of industrial location constructed so as to account for its spatial form. In the language of this essay: the nexuses of causality and intelligibility responsible for a social phenomenon are, ipso facto, responsible for its spatial form. But certain components of these nexuses will be more pertinent than others in account- ing for this form. So an explanation of its spatial form will consist in a description of these particular components. Other components might be cited in explanations of other aspects of the phenomenon. These remarks, incidentally, apply to all spatial features of social reality, including features of objective space.

Consider the spatial distribution of welfare payments. An investigator might seek to explain variations among states in such payments. Suppose he judges that state legislative decisions about payment levels are key junctures (or "controlling filters," cf. Giddens 1979, 79) in the causal chains leading to such payments. If so, then explanations of payment levels in individual states would be overviews of the nexuses of causality and intelligibility responsible for these decisions: the financial, economic, or personal (etc.) states of affairs to which legislators reacted; the ideas, thoughts, and customs concerning welfare recipients, minor- ities, state finances, and political ideology that governed their actions; and whatever experiences determined that these factors governed


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their decisions. Since the investigator is examining spatial variation in welfare payments, he might seek to identify differences in the factors and states of affairs that lead legislators in different states to support payments at what happen to be different levels. If payment levels remain relatively constant over large regions (e.g., "the south"), he might attempt to identify which states of affairs and factors seem typical or distinctive of that region in contrast to those typical or distinctive of other regions. If there is one state in a wider region where payments differ from those surrounding it, he will probably essay to identify what is distinctive about the factors and states of affairs determining decisions in that state. And so on. Whatever the particular spatial variation, the investigator will describe which of the totality of states of affairs and factors determining welfare legislation account for the variation. So the explanation of the spatial pattern of welfare payment is no different in form than that of any social phenomenon whatsoever.

As another example, consider the spatial distribution of office location. An investigator might want to know why offices cluster in certain locales or census tracts, are sparse in others, and are constructed in the vicinity of high- ways. Such matters are explained via overviews of the nexuses of causality and intelligibility that determine the decisions responsible for the construction of offices in particular locales and regions. The investigator might discover, for instance, that planners/executives react to, or act in the knowledge of, zoning laws and the location of labor pools; or that hidebound ideas or experiences about certain categories of people lead them to locate offices in certain locales; or that the planners/executives responsible for the different offices forming a cluster in a given locale have responded to the same states of affairs, decided on the basis of the same ideas, or reacted to one another's decisions. She might further learn that these states of affairs and ideas differ from those determining location decisions in different locales. And so on. In every case, the investigator will offer an overview of the states of affairs and factors that determine the decisions responsible for the location of offices at particular sites.

In explaining industrial location or the pattern of welfare payments, an investigator may judge that what are responsible for these phe-

nomena are not the states of affairs that determine the actions of legislators or planners/executives but, instead, what in turn determines these states of affairs. One type of judgment required of investigators in the construction of explanations is deciding how far back in the indefinitely long and complex nexuses of determining phenomena lie the most salient determinants of the explanandum. Identifying what determines the states of affairs responsible for legislators' and planners' actions, however, is a task of a kind with identifying the determinants of any social phenomenon. If, for instance, planners respond to a certain economic state of affairs, one accounts for this state of affairs, and perhaps therewith explains the planners' decisions, by analyzing it into its components and fashioning an overview of the nexuses of causality and intelligibility responsible for these components.

Just as explanations of spatial phenomena are of a kind with those of social phenomena generally, the possible explanatory uses of spatial properties are identical with those of other aspects of social reality. As discussed, there are four ways in which features of social reality can determine and be used to explain other features: (a) by acting and bringing these other features about, (b) by inducing responses, (c) by being something lived through which molds behavior, and (d) by being the object of the factors governing action. Actions alone realize (a). Spatial phenomena, like all other features of social life, can determine action and social phenomena in ways (b)-(d).

For instance, a planner decides to locate an office building in a given area of a city because a particular pool of labor is found there. In such case, a spatial aspect of a social phenomenon- the concentration of a particular kind of worker in a certain locale-determines behavior as a factor governing it. Spatial phenomena can also determine actions by inducing them, e.g., when legislators decide to locate medical facilities in a particular area of a state in response to the spatial distribution of such facilities as reported in a newly released study. Finally, spatial phenomena determine social affairs by molding behavior when lived spatial aspects of phenomena affect how people act. Manifold research dis- cusses this last phenomenon, e.g., Oswald's pi- oneering study (1970) of how the design and location of rooms and objects, together with



the resulting setup of places and paths, affects patient behavior in mental asylums.

These cases demonstrate that space can "make a difference" to social life. Sayer (1985) is wrong to maintain that it is the causal powers of what fills space, and not also space per se, that make a difference. When causal powers are modeled on the powers of an actor, this is of course true. When, however, we think of causal power as the ability to induce responses or to mold behavior, and acknowledge addi- tionally that spatial properties can be something out of the knowledge of which a person performs a particular action, it is clear that such properties, and not only those of what fills space, help determine social life. Sayer's point goes through only if causal power is construed merely as the capacity to open and constrict possibilities and if space is conceived too narrowly as a powerless set of relations among the entities which delimit possibilities.

It should be noted that the actions and states of affairs that determine social phenomena themselves exhibit spatial properties and configurations. The conditions under which these properties and configurations explain social phenomena are the same as those under which any aspect of social reality does. Suppose legislators in state A determine welfare payments partly on the basis of the living conditions and job opportunities of the state's poorest resi- dents. Although living conditions and job opportunities have spatial properties and form spatial patterns, it does not follow, for reasons parallel to ones discussed above, that these properties and patterns are part of the explanation of the state's welfare payments.

In this context, it is also worth noting that, since the phenomena that delimit possibilities are distributed over social reality, the possibilities open to people vary from place to place. For instance, for an individual with specific sorts of skills, experience, and knowledge, job opportunities are partly delimited by available means of transportation, by where particular sorts of jobs are available, and by what em- ployers at these locales might do when con- fronted with potential employees with these characteristics. Spatial variation in job opportunities for workers with these characteristics might then be explained by the layout of the transportation system and the different states of affairs that, in different locales and regions, determine employer practices.

Sociospatial Connectedness

This section further concretizes my claims about causality and explanation by considering three concepts of sociospatial connectedness. The first is a notion of spatial determination advanced by abstract realism. This school (see Sayer 1982, 1984) argues that abstract structures govern action. A particularly clear example where the structures concerned are spatial is found in Urry (1985). Urry describes six types of spatial division of labor, including regional specialization, regional dispersal, and three sorts of functional separation, and then writes:

As we have already noted we should not analyze a given area purely as the product of a single form of the spatial division of labour. To do so, as Sayer points out, is to 'collapse all the historical results of several interacting "spatial divisions of labor" into a rather misleading term which suggests some simple unitary empirical trend.' Rather, any such area is 'economically' the overlapping and interdependent product of a number of these spatial divisions of labour and attendant forms of industrial restructuring (39; the Sayer quotation is from Sayer 1982, 80).

The term 'product' is meant literally: the industrial state of any particular region is gen- erated by these divisions. Earlier Urry writes:

the social world ... is comprised of four-dimen- sional time-space entities; which bear complex and mutually modifying interrelations in time-space with each other; and these have the consequence of producing empirical distributions of social activities within time and space as a result of the partial and variable realisation of the respective causal powers of these entities (22).

Can we interpret these claims compatibly with the determination of social affairs by nexuses of causality and intelligibility?

Consider the "functional separation" among management/research and development in the "center," skilled labor in old manufacturing centers, and unskilled labor in the "periphery." Interpret this spatial division of labor as a distribution of different bundles of activities, factors, and objects among different sorts of places and paths in different locales and regions. Such an interpretation is necessary lest this "abstract" structure be disconnected from the causality and intelligibility determining social life. Now, such a distribution has no direct generative power in the manner human action does. But it probably does determine social phenomena at least by being something in response to


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or in the knowledge of which managers, governing officials, and workers, etc. perform particular actions, and maybe also by being something the experience of which molds behavior. So functional separations of this sort generate regional industrial features by determining the actions that constitute or bring about these features. (Recall that separations can do this only if the actors involved have concepts of them.) And the industrial features of a region are "the overlapping and interdependent product of a number of these spatial divisions of labour" if a number of these divisions determine the actions that constitute or bring about those features. These divisions of labor might also open and close off possibilities for people. It seems misleading, however, to refer to the delimita- tion of possibilities as a "generation" of action if only because the possibilities such divisions engender are more extensive than the actions that occur. In any case, only if abstract structures can be inserted into the nexuses of causality and intelligibility determining social affairs can they generate social phenomena.

A second concept of sociospatial connectedness is the sociospatial dialectic, the idea that social phenomena "are both space-forming and space-contingent. . ." (Soja 1980, 211; cf. 1985, 98). This is clearly a propitious idea since social phenomena create social spatiality and are themselves to varying extents determined by spatial states of affairs. We must be clear, however, about exactly what this "dialectic," or rather mutual determination, amounts to. So- cial phenomena form social space since social phenomena are elements of the nexuses of causality and intelligibility that give rise to distributions of actions, factors, and objects among places and paths. Spatial phenomena in turn determine social phenomena because they are among the elements of these nexuses that determine the actions, factors, objects, and places constituting social phenomena.

With this interpretation in hand, we are also able to evaluate a more specific content that Soja gives to his general concept. Capitalist production, he maintains, both creates and is contingent upon uneven development between cores and peripheries. This claim is cor- rect if: (1) those distributions of actions, factors, and objects among places in different locales that constitute uneven development are determined by the actions and states of affairs constituting capitalist production; and (2) the

development of the actions and states of affairs constituting capitalist production is in turn determined by aspects of such distributions. It seems to me that these conditions are met quite often in economic life. Profit-pursuing managers design and otherwise help bring about the location policies of industrial and financial institutions that create cores and peripheries; and how they construct these institutions re- flects economic and political core-periphery states of affairs such as spatial variations in labor pools.

A third concept of sociospatial connectedness is spatial dialectics. It is kin to the notion of sociospatial dialectics but in one of its forms brings physical space into the dialectic. Richard Peet defines spatial dialectics as "the nature of the historical movement of the spatial relations between environmentally-embedded processes" (1981, 107). Distinctions such as that between spatial relations and environmentally- embedded processes suggest that Peet construes spatial relations as something distinct from social processes. His claim that we need to "grant to spatial relations a relatively autonomous position, a history in part of its own, with a dialectic in part of its own .. ." (108) only strengthens that impression. According to Neil Smith, Peet erects a rigid, never transcended "dichotomy" between space and social processes (1981, 112; cf. 1979, 376).

When Peet speaks of spatial relations, however, he means social relations and processes occurring over physical space. This is evident only in an earlier article (1978) where he writes that "spatial relations are actually relations between components of the social formations embedded into geographical localities .. (151). Examples are the flow of investment from "world central social formations" to "periph- eral formations" and the return flow of surplus value. When spatial relations are understood as social relations transpiring over space, spatial dialectics becomes the development of the over-physical-space-transpiring connections between different social phenomena, the "complex interplay across space between different versions of a whole formation . . ." (152). In this formulation, unlike Soja's, dialectics does not concern interaction between spatiality and social phenomena but the evolution of social cum spatial relations. And the only social-spatial dichotomy Peet need countenance is one



between social processes and the physical space in which they occur.

Pace Smith, this dichotomy is perfectly legitimate and in no need of transcendence. Even if social phenomena are partly physical and accordingly help constitute physical space rela- tionally construed, Peet can still legitimately dif- ferentiate between the space constituted by physical objects other than people and the human activities transpiring within it. If physical space is treated as absolute, then there is clearly nothing wrong with the dichotomy between space and society. Only if one objects, as Smith does, to the incorporation of a physical space distinct from social processes into the analysis of social life (for him, the space relevant to social analysis is the spatial properties of matter understood as use-values [1981, 115]), can one accuse Peet of a needless, though not illegiti- mate, dichotomization. It seems to me, that this is a dichotomy we want to retain. Just as there is a sociospatial dialectic between social and spatial phenomena, so, too, is there one between social phenomena and physical space, and this is a not-inconsequential fact for social existence.

Peet does, however, advance one false dichotomy: that between social relations and processes qua abstract entities and their concrete spatial manifestations. He differentiates, for example, between the abstract process of the build-up of contradictions between the forces and relations of production and the "geographical specificities" this process as- sumes in particular geographical localities. He even (1977, 254) characterizes this distinction as one between social processes and spatial processes, e.g., the social contradiction between capital and labor and the spatial contradiction between the first and third worlds. Now, there is a perfectly legitimate distinction between a type of process (or relation) and its varying instances. It is a mistake, however, to treat a type of process as an abstract entity and its instances as spatial manifestations of this entity. One reason for this is that types of processes, unlike the abstract processes Peet envisions, are concepts. They determine social life only when they are factors governing what people do. Peet is wrong, therefore, to aver that the above-mentioned abstract process lies at the bottom of historical development. There are no abstract social processes with causal powers vis-A-vis social life, only ideas of such

processes, ideas which govern action. A claim of this scope can be true only if historical development is determined in the ways discussed earlier by instances of the process now rein- terpreted as a type concept.

Conclusion

This paper has outlined an individualist a

ontología espacial y explicación

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