POSTMODERNIST THOUGHT IN GEOGRAPHY: A REALIST VIEW

The paper develops a critique of some ideas that have emerged in geographers' interpretations of postmodernist thought. The intention is not to criticize them for diverging from the views of leading postmodernist authors but simply as ideas in themselves, regardless of their origins. Three main problems are discussed: firstly, a flip from foundationalism or naive objectivism to new versions of idealism and relativism; secondly, a flip from grand narratives or totalizing discourses to local knowledges; and thirdly, a flip from ethnocentrism or androcentrism to “cultural relativism writ small” in which authors grant a privileged status to the knowledge, values and judgements of others. It is argued that each of these “pomo-flips” is unsatisfactory, and that critical realism offers an alternative way of resolving the problems. This involves different concepts of truth and of the role of philosophy from those often assumed in the postmodernist literature on space and society.