The restructuring approach
The restructuring literature has been primarily concerned with recent patterns of economic change (for an excellent review see Lovering, 1989). Even though many of those working in this area were explicit in their intention to avoid economic reductionism still the impression lingered that economic change was the 'prime mover' and that political and cultural changes somehow fol-lowed. This can be illustrated by reference to perhaps the most influential text in this genre — Doreen Massey's Spatial Divisions of' Labour. This book, published in 1984, provided the impetus for many of the locality studies that followed, most notably the CURS initiative.
Massey stresses that 'local histories and local distinctiveness are integral to the social nature of production relations. . . (59) but argues that such distinctiveness must be situated firmly within the unfolding of the spatial division of labour that runs parallel to the more familiar technical division of labour:
just as the division of labour between different workers can increase productivity and thereby profit so can its division between regions, by enabling the different stages of production each to respond more exactly to their own specific location factors. Spatial structure, in other words, is an active element in accumulation (74).
The spatial division of labour leads to different spaces being allocated different 'bundles of functions' within the overall division of labour.
Local areas are, in this schema, profoundly shaped by their 'roles' in the spatial division of labour. To describe this process Massey employs a geological metaphor which has subsequently come to define the spatial divisions of labour approach. Here localities are characterised as being made up of a series of 'layers' of investment, one imposed upon another. While this idea of local areas being formed by sedimented layers of economic func-tions is simple it allows us to capture the complexity of local economies. There is an articulation between the previous roles the locality has played and new ones. Each locality, having played a multitude of such roles must be treated as unique, while the processes which give rise to its uniqueness are the general processes of economic restructuring or the unfolding of the spatial division of labour. Massey appears, on the surface at least, to have pulled off a delicate balancing act. As she herself puts it `the challenge is to hold the two sides together; to understand the general underlying causes while at the same time recognising and appreciating the importance of the specific and unique' (300). This neatly encapsulates the whole purpose of locality studies of the 1980s.
The broad thrust of the 'restructuring' approach has been to treat the locality as constituted through the operation and inter-ction of general processes and relationships, such as spatial divisions of labour, which are inevitably realized and mediated in particular places. Locality in this sense is close to being merely the contingent outcome of these various processes, and is interesting to the social theorist mainly for its descriptive potential, in that it provides the site from which the workings of processes can be well observed. Locality studies from this standpoint would provide the `laboratories' (Bell and Newby, 1971) from which a much more theoretically informed equivalent to the old community studies could be produced. These would not have to be simply ideographic `glorifications of the uniqueness of place' (Warde, 1989) since they would be tied together by a more thoroughly worked out general theoretical framework, such as the `restructuring' thesis might eventually provide. This was indeed the apparent purpose of the CURS programme. On this reading, locality as such would not hold any special explanatory power.
But the fact that general processes can only be realized in and through particular places immediately suggests a more active role for at least certain `local' processes, since the nature of the exist-ing local social relations, political arrangements and so on must condition and contextualise the manner of their realization. This is where we begin to find references to the locality as a `basis' for collective action, or as an object of various subjective conceptions. In other words, the particular composition of a locality may generate distinctive outcomes which are worthy of attention; `locality effects' which may, or may not, be unique (Savage et al.,1987). This is not to presuppose, as Duncan suggests it must, that locality gives ‘privileged access’ to understanding, but that it is a context which must be taken into account. Among actors, for example, whether they be individuals or households or firms, what goes on around them, in *their* locality, is bound to form part of what they take into consideration when formulating their actions. A variety of ‘local social processes’ will therefore arise that invoke elements of the local situation; locality, or the local milieu, may then constitute one of the ‘collective situations’ within which people act, and one of the conditions framing the restructuring process.
Massey herself clearly rejects any simple deterministic link between economic change and change in the social, cultural, and political spheres. She seems to believe that these can also be regarded as being ‘layered‘ in localities. What is not clear however, is the extent to which these non-economic layers are independent of the economic or how it might he possible to bring the various layers together in a more “holistic” analysis of a given locality. This leads on to a further set of questions: what effect does an area‘s cultural or political distinctiveness have on its participation in the spatial divisions of labour? and, perhaps more importantly, are the ‘successive outcomes' of economic change necessarily determined by forces outside the locality or do local actors exercise sufhcient power to steer these forces in directions which result in outcomes which directly benefit them?
Subsequent work in this vein has not really brought us any nearer to solving these problems. With the exception perhaps of recent work emanating from the Lancaster research group (Bagguley et nI,, l990) work within the CURS programme has, as yet, remained firmly in the economic sphere and made no real attempt to conceptualise the relationship between economic change and cultural/political change within the various localities. ln part, this was the consequence of choosing local labour markets as the operational equivalents of localities, thereby making them the ‘cornerstone' of the localities approach (Peck, l989:42),
This decision imposes very serious limitations on the outcomes of the nnttlysis. Firstly, problems are manifest at the empirical level where local labour markets are usually defined as travel-to-work areas, As Peck admits.
Faced with the complex web of intersecting and overlapping travel-to-work patterns, which are themselves in a constant tate of flux, largely arbitrary judgements must be made about 'acceptable' levels of self-containment (1989:43).
Duncan and Savage (1989) reject local labour markets on this basis.
Secondly, making local labour markets (or travel to work areas) the defining characteristic of the locality also ensures that economic criteria will take precedence over other possible meanings. Social relations outside the workplace will escape this economic boundary, because, as Bowlby et al. note in their examination of gender relations and labour markets,
the problem is not simply that labour market boundaries are different for various groups, and especially for women and men, making them difficult to identify — it is also that social relations outside the workplace are not necessarily confined within local labour markets (1986:329).
When attention is so firmly directed to economic change we once again run into problems in grasping the relationships between local economies, local cultural formations and local politics.
Sedang diterjemahkan, harap tunggu..