Definitional Indifferences and Formal/Functional Equivalences: A Commentary

Abstract

This commentary takes as its point of departure van Heur’s (2023) What, where and who is urban studies? On research centres in an unequal world. The paper's four concluding propositions, resting on an empirical dataset generated through the Scopus-registered 2011 to 2021 publications of the more than 1000 researchers affiliated to 30 university-housed urban studies centres, constitute an important contribution to thinking through one potential version of the future of urban studies. Such is the richness of this paper that a commentary might highlight all manner of points. I will contain myself here to two, which likely say as much about me as about the initial paper, such is the nature of these sorts of commentaries. My points relate to definitional indifferences and formal/functional equivalences.

Introduction

van Heur (2023) considers what the emergence of urban ‘research centres’ around the world might mean for the field of urban studies in his recent paper, What, where and who is urban studies? On research centres in an unequal world. Using the bibliometric analysis that has grown in popularity over the last decade (Donthu et al., 2021; Kanai et al., 2018; Kong and Qian, 2019), the paper rests on a large data set, consisting of ten years of Scopus-registered research outputs published by over 1000 researchers ‘affiliated’ to 30 urban studies centres. van Heur (2023) makes a contribution to pre-existing debates ‘about the (uneven) geographies of urban knowledge production and circulation’ (p. 64). We have seen over the last couple of decades a slow but steady asking of these questions. Despite this apparent mainstreaming, those who continue to be positioned as margin – geographically or intellectually or both – often still have to perform an empirical hop, skip and jump to align their findings with pre-existing concepts and theories (Jazeel, 2019). These questions also constitute part of a recent wider turn in the field, centring on challenging ‘the persistent Eurocentrism that undergirds urban studies’ (Roy, 2020:19). The responses to the call for ‘new geographies of theory’ (Roy, 2009: 819), have gone by a number of short hands, including ‘southern theory’ and ‘southern urbanism’ (Lawhon and Le Roux, 2019; Robinson, 2003; Robinson and Roy, 2016; Schindler, 2017).

In this commentary, I highlight two points – namely those of definitional indifferences and formal/functional equivalences. I then draw upon my own, situated, experiences in one of the urban studies ‘research centres’ identified by van Heur (2023), the Manchester Urban Institute (MUI).

Turning to the first of my two points, and being deliberately provocative, I am tempted to say that I am indifferent to whether there is such a thing as ‘urban studies’, so I suggest we do not spend too much time in the future trying to define it. That is the ‘what’ in van Heur (2023). Let me explain. Of course, there is something called ‘urban studies’ that exists in the world. It is given definitional scope and shape in and through the boundary work done in disciplines, including by those in geography, planning, political science, and sociology, as well as by others whose contribution is more recent, such as in the medical and natural sciences (Barnett, 2021). Contact zones, in the form of academic conferences, a similarly named long-standing journal, of course, a relatively recently established summer institute (https://www.mui.manchester.ac.uk/connect/events/summer-institute/) as well as research outputs, such as edited collections and handbooks, have given the notion of ‘urban studies' longevity, intellectually, although its precise history varies from one country to another.

For example, over 20 years ago, in his introduction to the Handbook of Urban Studies, Paddison (2001: 1) exclaimed that ‘the historiography of urban studies is a complex story, cutting across, as well at times, constrained by, disciplinary lines’. He proceeded to add that ‘delimiting the boundaries of the field of urban studies is by no means a straightforward task’ (p. 1). Indeed! From different geographical vantage points around the world, better minds than mine have set about addressing this task (for a sample, see Bowen et al., 2010; Coelho and Sood, 2022; Gutkind, 1968; Gutman, 1963; Iossifova et al., 2017; Judd, 2005; Müller and Trubina, 2020; Paddison, 2001; Sapotichne et al., 2007; Topalov, 1989; Wolman et al., 2022). These have both troubled work that took for granted the experiences of the United States in the generation of definitions of urban studies, while also recovering longer, parallel definitional histories generated out of other countries across the world. At best, clarity and agreement over what counts and gets included in the notion of ‘urban studies’ always seem closer than it turns out. On the horizon but never getting any closer, so to speak.

On the one hand, van Heur (2023) sidesteps this issue. As he notes, through ‘identifying and describing the research currently conducted within urban studies centres across the world, using the Scopus dataset of publications … Urban studies is what urban studies does’ (p. 69). On the other hand, van Heur (2023) begins his paper by writing about ‘urban studies’ as a field; by its end, it has become a discipline. After his bibliometric exercise, we seem no nearer to definitional nirvana. For me at least, that is okay. If it was the case, based on a single country, the United States, that there was not a ‘coherent research program in urban studies’ (Gutman, 1963: 12), it is perhaps not a surprise that given the data generated and mobilised by van Heur (2023), we are no nearer coherence. This is a generative direction of intellectual travel, as the geographical and intellectual reference points in the historiography of urban studies become ever more numerous. My argument is that regardless of claims and protestations, this indeterminate, open and rolling definitional ambiguity is no bad thing.

Turning next to my second point, the paper by van Heur (2023: 6) partially rests on a comparison of thirty ‘self-identifying urban studies centres’. Table 1 presents them by geographical location. A multi-point criteria selection is set out, as part of a broader methodological statement. An important element in this selection strategy is the presence of ‘urban’ in the title. Much like the generation and analysis of any dataset, this one is imperfect. van Heur (2023: 4) acknowledges this, highlighting the particular benefits and limits of this strategy. However, a wider point demands attention. The urban studies centres compared in this article are formal rather than functional equivalents (Jowell, 1998; Ragin, 1987). So what? Put simply, it means this is a comparison of entities with the same single word in their titles but which might be qualitatively different in other (important?) ways. It is like comparing local governments in different nations. They have the same titles but each exists in different geographical and institutional contexts or systems. In each case, the notion of ‘local government’ only has meaning when understood in relation to the other entities. We might expect it to be the same with university-based organisations with ‘urban’ in their titles.

That is, one might argue that each urban studies centre is a creature of its university, brought into being through sometimes fractious, sometimes straightforward, negotiations with other bits of a pre-existing university system. These tend to be disciplinary departments or schools, with baselines, that are cost units and to which flows resources from research and teaching. Who is inside and outside of a centre is also subject to contestation. Hence, financial and governance arrangements matter. They shape, and sometimes determine, what is possible, and often, probable. This has consequences for the data van Heur (2023) has collected and analysed. He writes about ‘university-wide membership’ (p. 66) on the one hand, while on the other, Table 4 is about ‘centre-affiliated authors’ (p. 80). My sense is with centres, or any other named organisational entity that exists in the institutional space between traditional disciplinary departments, there is a requirement to grow affiliated members, in part to explain and justify their existence. This point takes on extra importance given that some of us/many of us research and write, supervise and teach, across a range of interests, such as me, as an economic, political and urban geographer, and so who is counted (or counts themselves) inside/outside a centre is less a science and more an art.

A short story from the (Oxford) road, Manchester

Indulge me, please. On 1 August 2016, the Manchester Urban Institute (MUI) was established. It did not emerge fully formed, overnight, of course. It was years in the making, quite literally. Emotional, financial and organisational labour spent. A group of anthropologists, architects, geographers, planners and sociologists, we supervised, taught and wrote with those outside of our disciplines. We published in a number of those journals van Heur (2023: 7) notes as the ‘“canon” of urban studies’, and beyond. However, this work across disciplines did not appear on our university's organisational map. There was no single point of entry for anyone inside or outside of the University of Manchester interested in what our individual and collective urban research and teaching amounted to. Instead, it appeared on departmental and individual webpages. Thus, we made the case for the establishment of a new entity, organisationally outside of our university's disciplinary departments. We jumped through a succession of organisational hoops. We established cities@manchester as a stopgap organisational vehicle, a precursor for the formation of the MUI. The latter appears as one of four ‘Northern Europe’ ‘urban studies centres’ in van Heur (2023: 5). Of course, in the seven or so years since the formation of the MUI, those of us involved in its governance had to regularly confirm and reconfirm its existence. Whether through formal annual reviews, or informal day-to-day interactions with others inside and outside of the university, there was a seeming need to perform its existence, to justify the initial seed-corn funding of research activity and administration, which tapered off after a few years.

Reflecting on my intellectual and organisational experiences as the inaugural Director of the MUI I offer the following to illustrate my earlier point, with no claims over the generalisability of these in comparison to the other 29 urban research centres in van Heur's (2023) paper (and those that are not). That said, the MUI is a member of the Urban Agency Network (https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/research-groups/centre-urban-history/projects-members/networks/urban-agency-network/) and was a member of the now seemingly defunct Global Urban Network (https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/news/u-ts-school-cities-draws-worlds-urban-institutes-toronto-global-network-workshop), and in and through them, and events, it did seem my experiences were not atypical. First, then, while we were a ‘whole’, in the sense of being ‘members’ of a single university-based organisation, through the MUI were pursued an intellectually disparate and sprawling set of research agendas. There was no agreement over this thing called ‘urban studies’. Indeed, there was little discussion of it. Intellectually coherent, we were not. Thus, ‘the urban’ was doing a lot of work for us, so one imagines that as much difference as similarity characterises those organisational entities in the dataset generated by van Heur (2023). Second, membership and its meaning were contentious across campus. We existed outside of the university's organisational hierarchies. As such, in many ways, we did not exist! ‘Members’ were also members of a department, appearing on its financial baseline. All types of line management occurred through departments. Research grants would follow the successful applicant, and hence, back to a home department. With no means of generating and retaining revenue to finance a research programme, the terms of the establishment of the MUI, likely in common with others in van Heur's (2023) dataset have meant a very narrow organisational bandwidth.

I do not mean either of these points to take away from the contribution made by van Heur (2023). I enjoyed the paper and think it makes an important addition to understanding ‘the potential role for research centres in creating a more equal playing field for urban studies’ (p. 63), as part of the wider dialogue over what the future urban studies might look like.