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Urban Geography
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Postmodern Geographies: The

Reassertion of Space in Critical Social
Theory, Edward W. Soja; Cities in China,
Urbanization of the Earth Series, No.
7, Alfred Schinz; Cities in Space, Cities
as Place, David T. Herbert and Colin J.
Thomas
a b c
David M. Smith , Clifton W. Pannell & Ira M. Sheskin
a
Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, London,
UK
b
University of Georgia, Georgia
c
University of Miami, Florida
Published online: 15 May 2013.

To cite this article: David M. Smith , Clifton W. Pannell & Ira M. Sheskin (1991) Postmodern
Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, Edward W. Soja; Cities in China,
Urbanization of the Earth Series, No. 7, Alfred Schinz; Cities in Space, Cities as Place, David T.
Herbert and Colin J. Thomas, Urban Geography, 12:1, 93-98, DOI: 10.2747/0272-3638.12.1.93

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.12.1.93

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 BOOK REVIEWS 93

Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory,

Edward W Soja. Verso, London and New York, 1989.266 pp., maps, diags., tables.
$65.00, cloth, $16.95, paper.

Reviewed by: David M. Smith, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of
London

Affiliation with postmodernism, or at least claims to its comprehension, has become a

talisperson of the contemporary vanguard in human geography, much as was reading Marx a
decade ago and the ability to run a factor analysis a generation before. Edward Soja survived an
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early encounter with modernization surfaces, espoused Marxism, and then became one of the
first to proclaim the postmodernization of geography (Soja, 1987). This book comprises a
reworking of a number of earlier contributions to the reassertion of a critical spatial perspective
in contemporary social theory and analysis. He contests the undue historicization which
hitherto characterized social inquiry, arguing for a “historical and geographical materialism, a
radical rethinking of the dialectics of space, time and social being” (to quote the jacket blurb) or
“to spatialize the historical narrative” (p. 1).
At the outset, he signals an intention “to tamper with the familiar modalities of time, to shake
up the normal flow of the linear text,” by combining a Preface and Postscript, and suggesting
that starting at the beginning may not be the only way into the book. However, this staid reviewer
resisted the temptation to begin with the end and work back to the Postscript in favor of a more
conventional reading, despite a strong and no doubt philistine (or at least premodern) urge to
skip philosophical discourse for the promised final essays on an actual place-Los Angeles.
To describe the meaning of postmodernism or postmodernity as elusive is an understatement.
In any event, it is still being created by human practice. Soja does, however, proffer the initial
definition of postmodern (and “postfordist”) geographies as “the most recent products of a
sequence of spatialities that can be complexly correlated to successive eras of capitalist
development” (p. 3), the spatio-temporal rhythm of which is central to his argument. No
dramatic break with Marxian thought is therefore to be expected, more the continued
spatialization of historical materialism.
However, the growing popular usage of the label postmodem is indicative that something new
is taking place. Soja identifies two changing contexts of history and geography, representing a
shift from modernity to postmodernity: “one imprinted concretely on the empirical fabric of
contemporary life (a postmodern geography of the material world), and the other threading
through the ways we make practical and political sense of the present, past and potential future
(a postmodern geography of critical social consciousness)” (p. 12). His task is what he describes
as a first round of responsive evaluation.
Seeking the origins of postmodern geographies (Chapter 1) requires both a critique of
historicism, which Soja defines as “an overdeveloped historical conceptualization of social life
and social theory that actively submerges and peripheralizes the geographical and spatial
imagination’’ (p. 15), and an examination of modernization as “a continuous process of societal
restructuring that is periodically accelerated to produce a significant recomposition of space-
time-being in their concrete forms, a change in the nature and experience of modernity that
arises primarily from the historical and geographical dynamics of modes of production.” Social
inquiry, for the most part, saw (capitalist) modernization as a matter of time. Michel Foucault,
John Berger, Ernest Mandel, and Marshall Berman are credited with attempts to reassert
spatiality, but it is for Henri Lefebvre that Soja reserves the accolade of the original and
foremost historical and geographical materialist.
 94 BOOK REVIEWS

Like modernism itself, postmodernism can be construed as a Kuhnian paradigm shift,

provoked by the inability of established modes of thought to come to terms with changing
material conditions. In Chapter 2 Soja shows how western Marxism (as opposed to orthodox
Marxism-Leninism) transformed the Modern Geography associated with quantification and
the geometry of spatial form. He identifies the tension which arose initially from fear of that
most heinous crime of the fetishism of space, the resolution of which involved the spatialization
of Marxism itself. He finds the work of literary critic Fredric Jameson especially helpful in
elucidating what he terms the three spatializations of “posthistoricism” as the reformulation of
the nature and conceptualization of social being, “postfordism” as the most recent phase in the
modernization or restructing of capitalism, and “postmodernism” as cultural and ideological
change. Readers are deftly guided through various twists and turns in Marxist geography with
the sensitivetouch of an insider, whose own position is now for “flexible deconstruction” and the
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reconstruction of a critical human geography attuned to human emancipation.

After this, there is a more obvious sense of diju vu in the reassertion of Soja’s socio-spatial
dialectic of a decade ago (Chapter 3) and the replay of some debates of the 1970s in urban and
regional studies (Chapter 4).Chapter 5 is based on a 1985 discussion of conceptions of space as
both socially produced and constraining,extending into consideration of a spatialized ontology
building an existential phenomenology. Chapter 6 is based on Soja’s 1983 review of Anthony
Giddens’ work involving the incorporation of space into general social theory Soja finds much
to commend in Giddens’ structuration theory, but remains uneasy about the depth of his
spatiality and his preoccupation with ontology at the expense of epistemology.In fact, it is Soja’s
impatience with Giddens’reification that concludes the discussion, leading on to the need for its
deconstruction before we can do anything new to make sense of contemporary modernity (or
postmodernity).
This signals a desire to engage the “real world” that occupies the final three chapters, the
foregoing having outlined “the foundations for a politically-charged empirical interpretation of
the historical geography of capitalism” (p. 158). The context is urban and regional change:
“Making theoretical and practical sense of this contemporary restructuring of capitalist
spatiality can become the overriding goal of an emerging critical human geography” (p. 159).A
general discussion of regional restructuring and the evolution of urban form (Chapter 7),
concluding with a call for “critical regional studies,” provides a prelude to the final two essays
on Los Angeles. What better place can there be, Soja asks, to illustrate and synthesize the
dynamics of capitalist spatialization? Chapter 8 comprises “informed regional description” in
the shape of a discursive account of the interaction of economic restructuring and spatial form
in the metropolis,pages that could helpfully be pasted into any current text on the United States
let alone those concerned with more general aspects of urban and regional development.
By the time the final chapter is reached, the level of expectation generated is almost bound to
lead to disappointment. That this reviewer’s was not greater is a tribute to Soja’s geographical
imagination. “Purposefully eclectic, fragmentary, incomplete and frequently contradictory”
(p. 247), like the city itself, yet with glimpses of the power of a “totalizing union” which cannot
hope to grasp it all, this chapter is a powerful evocation of place. If Soja’sconsiderable literary
prowess is not quite up to what may require the poet, painter, and musician to augment the power
of prose, there are some memorable turns of phrase (like the selling of Los Angeles to the
rhythm of “the legitimizing beat of dull and thumping market forces”), and his vignette of the
Bonaventure Hotel is sharply observed. That we do not yet have the language (in the broadcast
sense) to express it all is recognized by Soja; the challenge is to match imagination by creative
expression.
This book is likely to be grasped (if not digested) avidly by those seeking some guidance into
postmodernism. However, it is unlikely to satisfy those already familiar with the vanguard social
theorists of postmodernism (such as Baudrillard, Lyotard, and Rorty) despite the brief attention
 BOOK REVIEWS 95

to Jameson; the insights of Lefebvre, interesting as they are, hardly address postmodernism.
Indeed, the sense of postmodernism conveyed in much of the book is that of something
following and different from Modern Geography, rather than of a project congruent with
postmodernism as understood outside the field of geography.
Readers less familiar with the broader context may also find themselves frustrated, especially
by the inaccessibilityof some of what Soja wants to convey. The vocabulary is at times obscure,
even pretentious, which makes it a difficult book for undergraduates. This reviewer found parts
of the book too dense for easy understanding, the prose ranging from elegant to exasperating,
some sections repetitive, and the format of partially rewritten work extending over almost a
decade an impediment to the project’s cohesion. The earlier work is readily available for those
who want to read it, and what is new hardlyjustifies a book.
However, the underlying attempt to spatialize historical materialism, and not least to preserve
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the possibility of a reconstituted materialism surviving the postmodernist distaste for meta-
narrative, carries some conviction. In this sense, Soja adds weight to Harvey’s (1989) masterly
treatise, if any were required. Harvey’s broader and more coherent treatment, giving culture and
esthetics a centrality that Soja largely misses, makes for tough competition. Soja’s work over
the years is a useful,if less satisfyingcomplement,with the commendable additional attribute of
engaging the material world of place and the people therein.
Leaving the meaning of postmodernism aside, Soja has taken a significant step toward
demonstrating a new critical regional analysis, grounded but not too firmly rooted in historical
geographical materialism, and requiring both imagination and the creative power to express it.
That such a project may eventually become emancipatory in a political sense could be too much
to hope for, but at least some more power can be given to those whose struggle is against the
remaining shackles of Modern Geography.

REFERENCES

Soja, E. The Postmodernization of Human Geography: A Review Essay. Annals,Association of American

Geographers, 77 (19871, pp. 289-296.
Harvey, D. The Condition of Postmodemity.Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1989.

Cities in China, Urbanization of the Earth Series, No. 7, Alfred Schinz. Gebrbder
Borntraeger, Berlin, 1989.492 pp., maps, tables, photos, index. $98.

Reviewed by Clifton W Pannell, University of Georgia

China, according to the recently concluded 1990 mid-year decennial census, now has 298
million people in its cities and towns, roughly 26 percent of the total population. In addition to
such a large number of urban dwellers,the country also has a long and rich history and tradition
of city building and urban life. A considerable amount of this urban history and tradition as well
as the modern urban form is described in this volume, Cities in China. Alfred Schinz, a German
urban geographer and city planner, has compiled a remarkable text that provides an extraordi-
nary range of historical, geographic, and planning data on 187 of China’s most noteworthy
cities and urban places.
The book is large in format and long, composed of almost 500 pages. It is very generously
illustrated with 389 figures and one chart. These include maps, photographs, sketches, and city
plans as well as a few graphs and other diagrams. Nineteen tables add additional supporting
 96 BOOK REVIEWS

information. A four color map of China’s land use, with all cities of 400,000population or more
identified on it by size, is inserted in a sleeve in the back of the book. The scope of the text
embraces all of the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao. Pinyin
romanization is used almost exclusivelyin this work for the spelling of Chinese words and place
names.
Author Schinz is an interesting fellow. If memory serves me, early in his career he worked as
the chief planner for the new German city of Wolfsburg as it was being built and developed after
World War 11. I first met him in 1969 when he was working for the United Nations Development
Program as an advisor on urban planning and development in Taipei. In addition to his official
duties, he was busily collecting maps, textual material, photos, and anything else relevant to the
growth and development of Taiwan’s cities. Indeed, he was kind enough to share with me some
early maps of Taichung, a city I was researching for my doctoral dissertation. Subsequently, he
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went to mainland China and taught at Tongji University in Shanghai which is a major institution
for urban planning and design. During the 1980s he traveled to many parts of China where he
met with urban planners and design specialists and continued to build his collection of Chinese
urban materials which served as the basis for this book. He has also read extensively in both
Chinese geography and history.
This massive book is, in fact, almost two books in one. First, it is a kind of introductory
geography and historical geography text on China. This forms a foundation on which the main
part of the text is constructed. Population, history, and the phases of China’s urban development
are the main themes stressed. After about forty pages of discussion on these topics, he gets to
more purely geographic material and outlines the main regions of China. This is his pro-
legomenon to a description of economic regions, itself a precursor to what he calls the urban
regions of China. It is these urban regions, derived conceptually in part from a not-entirely-clear
description of China’s regional hierarchy of cities, which then provide Schinz with the
organizational scheme for the main body of the text. This main body consists of the 187 or so
descriptions of China’s main cities and urban cultural centers. The text of the volume simply
goes through the 11 identified regions of China and provides descriptions and discussions of
varying length and detail of China’s most significant urban places. The urban descriptions and
vignettes could almost have been a separate book, a kind of compendium of a significant share
of China’s great urban tradition seen in detailed and well illustrated encyclopedic biographies
of many of its notable cities. Encyclopedic is a key term here, for this volume if nothing else is a
major reference work on the cities it describes. This reviewer remains dazzled at the sheer
volume of material that author Schinz has compiled, dutifully catalogued, described in some
detail, and illustrated, generally with consistency and clarity for all of the cities included.
There are a few problems here. First, I would argue a bit with the selection of cities. The
author covers the largest and most important, and he also includes a number of smaller but old,
and historically key centers, those he describes as possessing cultural merit. But China is a huge
country,and it is very difficult to be selective without being arbitrary. His coverage of the cities in
places becomes spotty. For example, the ancient city of Xianyang just north of Xi’an would
appear to justify a description based on its historical significance and its linkage to the
incredibly rich archaeological unveiling going on in that part of the Weihe valley. There is no
mention of the place. In other regions, cities of some consequence such as the capital of Anhui,
Hefei, and the large northeastern industrial city of Benxi get short shrift. This suggests some
problems in maintaining a consistency of scope and coverage based on the size and significance
of the urban places. While this may seem picky, a more systematic approach to selecting cities
with clearly defined criteria would have helped as well as a more consistent approach to ensure
similar coverage in the city descriptions.
On the positive side, the great cities are generally well illustrated and adequately described.
Almost anyone with an interest in China or cities will benefit from reading Schinz’s description
 BOOK REVIEWS 97

of Beijing and studying the various maps and diagrams he provides. Generally, the largest cities
get the most attention, although again there is some inconsistency here as seen, for example, in
the long discussion of Daqing, the multinucleated oil city in Northeast China. This resource-
based new city has been described to the point that it has become a cliche of socialist hyperbole
on the new China. Schinz would have been far better served to have dismissed it with a
paragraph or two rather than three pages. Overall, however,he has done a good job in presenting
a reasonably standardized view of many, if not all, of the major cities and most important
cultural and historical urban places of China.
The goals of this text are truly daunting, and the task of compiling and writing such a
comprehensive work on China’s most significant cities is herculean. Only someone with a great
interest in and love of his subject would have persevered in this task. Despite some flaws such as
occasional gaps in scope and inconsistency in coverage, I like this volume and am very glad to
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have it in my reference collection on Chinese cities and urbanism. I think any library that
pretends to have a China collection should have a copy of this work. Anyone wanting
information on almost 190 of China’s cities will find something useful here. There are no
theoretical or conceptual advances to be found, but there is a substantial body of geographical
and historical description that represents years of study, interviewing, field surveys, visits, and
scholarly reflection. The sum of this work is indeed valuable, and Alfred Schinz deserves praise
for undertaking and completing such a work likely to be of considerable utility as a basic
reference source on China, its geography and cities for many years to come.

Cities in Space, Cities as Place, David T. Herbert and Colin J. Thomas. Barnes and
Noble, Savage, MD, 1990.340 pp + xi, index, ISBN 0-389-20923-6 $54.50.

Reviewed by Ira M. Sheskin, University of Miami.

This volume is a major revision and shortening of Urban Geography:A First Approach, first
published in 1982. The authors are British, and the level of difficulty and many of the examples
reflect their national origin. This is certainly not a book that could be used effectively in most
introductory urban geography courses in the United States, although it is worthwhile reading
for the graduate level as well as for professional geographers looking for basic background in a
diversity of areas. The book is designed to provide information, as the title implies, on “cities in
space,” that is, on cities as points in an urban system, and on “cities as place,” that is, on the
internal structure of cities. Besides this, the book also demonstrates the ways in which
geographers have become more involved in the interdisciplinary field of urban studies. As with
several other recent urban geography texts, considerably less space is devoted to some
traditional topics to provide space for new approaches. And a recognition is made that
geographers may have to look beyond “space,” as the explanation of all spatial outcomes, and
more to the social processes that help to shape patterns.
The first chapter traces the development of urban geography as a subdiscipline from the early
approaches (site and situation, urban settlement patterns, urban morphology and growth, and
the city in history and regional settings) to the “focus on pattern” that evolved in the spatial
analysis era of the 1960s to the “focus on process” that began with the behavioral approach in
the 1970s. The authors also provide excellent descriptions of positivism, humanism, and
structuralism.
Chapter 2 discusses theories of the emergence of urban areas and the urban system, and
examines the role of cities in traditional societies. The transition to the modern city in Britain
 98 BOOK REVIEWS

and North America is treated in some detail, followed by discussion of the industrial and post-
industrial city and the forces of suburbanization and urbanization. The chapter concludes with
sections on Third World and socialist cities. The third chapter covers many traditional concepts
and models of interurban geography. After brief introductions to the law of the primate city and
the rank-size rule, considerable space is devoted to Christallerian and Loschian central place
theory. The chapter also includes explanations of various terms that have been used to describe
urban regions, an extension of the discussion of the emergence of the subdiscipline introduced
in Chapter 1.
Chapter 4 examines the relationship between economic change and urban development
beginning with a discussion of the ideas of Myrdal. Some emphasis is given to the increasingly
important role of international economic considerationsand the tertiarization of the economies
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of Western developed societies in urban change. The fifth chapter reviews theories related to the
internal structure of urban places, including the ideas of bid-rent theory and the Burgess, Hoyt,
and Harris-Ullman models. This basic discussion is followed by sections on subjective
(behavioralist) and structural (socialist) approaches to the internal structure of cities.
Chapter 6 provides a brief comparison of the role of local governments in the U.S. and Britain.
Although these two countries form the focus of examples for many chapters, most of the other
chapters mention socialist and Third World cities; this one does not. Chapter 7 examines several
transport-related issues, including the configuration of transport networks and the issue of
public versus private transportation.
Urban services, including shopping, wholesaling and warehousing, offices, medical services,
and public utilities,are treated in Chapter 8. First, these services are examined in the city center,
including discussion of the traditional CBD models as well as an update on contemporary
central city issues such as gentrification and the increasing office role of the CBD. Second,
particular attention is given to the suburbanization of retail activity. Noticeably missing is a
discussion of the Adams model of the growth of the North American city, although some
interesting discussion is included on the suburban shopping mall and its internal structure.
Some interesting comparisons are made between the U.S. and U.K. medical services systems.
Residential land use forms the focus of Chapter 9. After a brief introduction to the index of
dissimilarity,the chapter concentrates on social area analysis and factorial ecologies of North
American, West European, and non-Western cities. The focus then shifts to ethnic segregation
.
and assimilation in the U.S., U.K., and, briefly, in Third World countries. The chapter ends with a
discussion of the housing market and intraurban migration.
Urban social geography is addressed in Chapter 10. The first part of this chapter explores the
extent to which the built environmentaffects human behavior, and is followed by a discussion of
social interaction and different types of neighborhoods. The chapter also looks at consumer
behavior, voting behavior, women, and children, and concludes with a brief section on cognitive
mapping. The final chapter addresses a number of urban problems, including those of the inner
city, ill-health, mental illness, substance abuse, urban crime and delinquency, and the elderly.
A postscript to the book states that: 1) “This text has discussed many of the traditional
concerns of urban geography and has also sought to indicate the ways in which the subject
continues to develop with new topical areas and conceptual positions which provide new
insights into the nature of cities”; and 2) “urban geographers have a professional expertise
which can contribute to the need for effective policies.” This well-written volume certainly
accomplishes its stated objectives. While many traditional topics are gone, or are given
somewhat brief treatment, they have been replaced with topics that reflect current research
practices and that can provide background to persistent urban problems.