Power, Modernity, and Historical Geography

Abstract

Abstract In the changed intellectual climate since historical geography emerged as a substantial geographical subfield, issues of power and modernity have come much to the fore. For Michel Foucault, power is less a property than a strategy and is widely distributed in cultural discourses and their settings. For Jürgen Habermas, modernity imposes a distinctive context of communications that undermines the stability of traditional lifeworlds and holds out a largely unfulfilled promise of rationality. For Anthony Giddens, the agency and settings of power cannot be conceptualized separately, nor can the emergence of modernity be understood apart from the changing reach and geographical configuration of power. For Michael Mann, a history of social power turns necessarily on an analysis of power's networks, logistics, and spatial contours. Such ideas about power and modernity emphasize the importance of a historical geography that is both immersed in data and sensitive to general literatures. A growing conversation between historical geography and parts of social theory would enrich both, while drawing historical geography into much closer association with the rest of human geography.