Comment on 'On the Nature of Explanation in Human Geography'

Abstract

In his article 'On the nature of explanation in human geography', Johnston (1980) provides us with an example of the contortions which so many academics perform in the name of bourgeois ideology, and of the 'loud silences' which characterize much of this work. According to Marx and Engels (1974), bourgeois ideology forms part of a self-justifying superstructure which includes political, legal, distributional and intellectual forms, and which tends to discourage all views except those which serve to justify the capitalist mode of production. Its features include overemphasis of the role of the individual, idealism, a strong tendency to put forward a synchronic or apparently ahistorical view of society as exemplified in notions of a basically unchanging human nature, and an obsession for deriving explanations based on generalizations. Under the capitalist mode of production, an ahistorical view thus operates to naturalize and universalize the forms of bourgeois democratic society so that the way people act and feel is universalized as 'human nature'. Such views are necessary if fundamental change is to be negated and the status quo upheld. A further necessary feature of bourgeois ideology is its function of incorporating and 'smoothing over' a wide variety of views of society, even though such views, and the interests of those who hold them, may be fundamentally in conflict with one another. Dangerous contradictions and conflicts are contained in order to ensure the hegemony of ruling-class ideas, but the ruling class will resort to cruder measures, e.g. suspension of 'democratic rights', violent repression, if necessary (Gramsci, 1971, pp. 52-120). In Johnston's case such containment operates through a 'broad church' approach (see also Eliot Hurst (1980)) in which we are told that little bits of positivism, behaviouralism, structuralism-wrongly conflated with Marxism which he never mentions!, and idealism will do us good, although phenomenology is rejected because it 'elevates the unique component of any explanation to an unjustified position' (p. 406). Bourgeois ideology also functions to tell us what is good and what is possible as well as suggesting the fearful consequences that may befall those who try to significantly disturb the status quo (Therborn, 1980). I should make it clear that although bourgeois ideology is characterized as a set of ideas and practices which people take totally for granted or of which they are only hazily aware, these ideas and practices do not form a seamless whole-the conflicts and contradictions may continually and fitfully 'rise to the surface', whether in the relationships between men and women, between workers and management, or between a region or section and the nation-state. Many issues are also given unsatisfactory treatment or are simply unmentioned. Because bourgeois ideology must operate to the advantage of those who own and control the means of production (i.e. the bourgeoisie) in capitalist societies like our own, its characteristics both can, and should, be analysed so that it can be changed.