Spatial Change, Politics and the Division of Labour

Abstract

This paper addresses some puzzles in the historical geography of British politics. It is concerned with the rhythms of the rise and fall of political practices which are spatially concentrated within the nation-state. What makes for the formation of ‘Red’ Clydeside, or the ‘Socialist Republic’ of South Yorkshire? How can we account for the resurgence of Celtic nationalism, whose explanation has defeated political scientist in recent years? What are we to make of analyses which identify the growth of urban and local social movements as a key political development of the last fifteen years? An adequate explanation of these developments would appear to require theoretical reference simultaneously to space, time and social mechanisms with causal powers. However, as Sack has pointed out,¹ explanations which successfully embrace all three elements are extremely rare. He maintains, reasonably, that this is because explanation in social science is generally weak: despite recent endeavours,² no theory satisfactorily encompasses the interrelationship between spatial, temporal and substantive social processes. In the meantime, for want of adequate theory, social scientists have tended to resort to the use of metaphor. This paper teases out one metaphor of change in the spatial patterning of social and economic relations, that conceptualised by Doreen Massey.