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    Jonathan Pugh – Reflections upon the relationship between space, time and governance

    Jonathan Pugh shows how the conception of ‘space’, ‘time’ and ‘governance’ as separate spheres of inquiry often makes us lose sight of the importance of the overlapping, and often conflicting, ‘space-time imaginaries’ that we experience in our everyday lives.


    The relationship between governance, space and time is extremely important: not least because political philosophers and geographers rarely talk across the dividing line between their disciplines. Geographers often focus too much upon how we understand space and time, at the expense of the political considerations of their work. And political theorists often seem to think that the same ideology they come up with will be relevant across the world, in all places and at all times. In talking across that dividing line, as we are beginning to do in the “Space of Democracy and Democracy of Space”, we can therefore make a ‘practical turn’, one that draws as much upon common sense and the everyday experiences of people, as the theoretical trajectories of different fashions in academia. In this short article I aim to briefly outline how conversations between geography and political philosophy could work, to give us a more practical focus in academia more generally.


    Political theory and the question of time


    In political theory, the work of the French intellectual Michel Foucault heralded a movement away from thinking about the effects of the State upon people, toward the effects of norms, ideologies, common styles and themes (a fashion that was taken up with vigour by academics from many disciplines in the 1980s and 90s). He considered the consequences of the way we think about homosexuality and psychiatry in particular. Since then academics have thought about how we become disciplined and produced as subjects through programmes of healthcare, dieting, social work, physical development planning, and many other ideological and moral practices. However, in focusing upon the consequences of such norms and morals for society, Foucault was not so good at drawing out how they often have very different effects in very different contexts and countries.


    The lack of importance given to this contingency by Foucault was first exposed by the political theorists Laclau and Mouffe (1985), in their seminal work, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. They pointed to how Foucault focuses upon how power emanates from a given ideology, moral, or norm. For Foucault the discourses of homosexuality, insanity and so on, tend produce effects in themselves. But Laclau and Mouffe pointed to how these effects instead depend upon the given situation at hand; in particular places, at specific times, for example. This gives more importance to the contingent articulation of a form of governance, and not upon reading a form of governance, such as feminism, social work, teaching, healthcare, and so on, as having essential consequences for those it impacts upon. Social work may have certain consequences in one context, but certainly something very different in another, for example.


    But we can talk up the importance of contingency even more strongly than Laclau and Mouffe, when we bring in how we understand space and time at a given moment. Let me illustrate this through an example of the governance of ‘development’. The word ‘development’ is a crucially important way of thinking about governance across the world. From one perspective, the language of development is often taken for granted, shaped by a history of Saint-Simonian doctrine, Comtean positivism and the ideas of John Stuart Mill. Development has historically been about promoting lateral connections between ‘Europe’ (later ‘the West’), with the purpose of shaping progress with order in the ‘developing’ world. Massey, illustrating one particular way of looking at the relationship between the discourse of development, space and time, states that:


    When, in economic geography for instance, we use terms such as ‘advanced’ and ‘backward’, ‘developed’ and ‘developing’, we are effectively imagining spatial differences (differences between places, regions, countries, etc) as temporal. We are arranging differences between places into historical sequence.


    Under this way of thinking about how development interacts with space and time, the discourse of development therefore has particular consequences for those in the ‘developing’ world. In doing so, it has significantly displaced many other discourses of governance, such as Negritude and Rastafarianism. Negritude and Rastafarian discourses, in contrast to the discourse of development, are formed through the distance from Africa, a place of the past. The associated longing for completeness, expressed in the discourses of Negritude and Rastafarianism, is fundamentally concerned with being spatially and temporally separated from the African motherland, and the anxiety caused by this separation. This is highlighted in Adisa Andewele’s “Antiquity”, who writes:

    uh could feel
    de black past
    of muh past
    leh muh reach
    fuh de memory
    so uh could be
    wid de African spirits
    that sing down in my soul.


    In short, from this perspective, different forms of governance, such as ‘development’ and ‘negritude’, are intrinsically linked to different understandings of space and time. Yet it is important to note that time is not the dominant force here. It is the movements in space, which produce time. As Doreen Massey says:


    the fact that time may be the medium within which change occurs (or, more radically, that change-through-interrelationality is one of the mechanisms in the creation of temporality) does not mean that it is its cause. Time cannot somehow, unaided, bootstrap itself into existence … In other words, there must already be multiplicity – to enable the possibility of interaction – for change to be produced as a result. And for there to be multiplicity there must be space.


    Space-time imaginaries


    Massey shows us that space, difference and interconnections between differences are necessary for time to exist. As she says, time does not somehow “bootstrap itself into existence”. The result is that there can never be separate spatial or temporal imaginaries; there can only space-time imaginaries (as the above examples of negritude and development indicate). But to reiterate, the movements we make in space produce time.


    Let us think about how this works from an everyday perspective. I may feel that governance in the town I live in, Newcastle, England, is increasingly being dominated by cultural elites from London, with their ideas of cultural regeneration for Newcastle. These build modern art galleries and theatres, something which many local people do not want. This, in turn, is intrinsically linked to what I think of ‘time’. The future of Newcastle becomes dominated by those who live in a different place – London. But then, one Saturday afternoon, when walking through the town, I hear the cheers of 50,000 local football fans, supporting Newcastle United football team. Newcastle thus starts to have a different identity for me, one that can’t be dominated by London. And my understanding of the future is changed still further, as I walk past a local shop, doing great trade in local products. The future of Newcastle is no longer dominated by elites in London; they are simply, only one part of its development. And so, different, often overlapping and conflicting understandings of space-time shape how we think about a particular discourse of governance – such as ‘development’. At one point development seems dominated by people from one place, shaping one understanding of the future. Yet at another, when we walk through different space-times ‘development’ becomes something else.


    This means that to talk of ‘space’, ‘time’ and ‘governance’ as separate, as many academics do, is to lose sight of the importance of the overlapping, and often conflicting, ‘space-time imaginaries’ that we experience in our everyday lives. For the idea of ‘development’, as in the case of all forms of governance, is open, up for grabs. The dominant Western idea of development is being challenged by a very wide range of groups – from Al-Quaeda, to those NGOs concerned with environmental and humanitarian issues, or more local, contingently articulated aspirations of development, unmediated by the State.


    And so, the important questions, behind this move to think ‘space’ and ‘time’ and ‘governance’ as one, inseparable from each other, are as follows: “To what extent will the pluralisation of space-time imaginaries make meaningful, elected and accountable governance possible at all in the future?” That is, “Will elected territorial spaces of democracy be strong enough – having enough respect and consent from a fragmented public body – to remain the mediating power between different political positions?” Or, “will we instead turn to unelected bodies to articulate are concerns: NGOs, the United Nations, NATO and so on?” One would hope it is not an either/or situation. And that elected, accountable, territorial spaces of democracy can adjust to these times of plural space-time imaginaries, whilst still having the final say as the legitimizing, elected force.


    Further links


    Some times of space


    Participatory planning in the Caribbean


    Special issue: recent articles, time/governance
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