Ways of Relating: Hospitality and the acknowledgement of otherness

This paper considers the relevance of the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida to geography’s engagements with both mainstream moral philosophy and poststructuralist theory. This relevance lies in the way in which their work unsettles the ascription of normative value to relations of proximity and distance. Distance is usually understood to be a medium of moral harm or indifference. In contrast, Levinas presents distance as the very condition of responsibility. Grasping the significance of this argument requires an appreciation of the temporality of responsibility and responsiveness that both Levinas and Derrida emphasise. They present an alternative way of understanding the relationality of subjectivity and social processes. Through a schematic exposition of key themes in Levinas’ work, prevalent understandings of the spatiality of relations are shown to harbour their own forms of indifference and moral harm. The full effect of Levinas’ reconsideration of the value of relations between proximity and distance is bought out in Derrida’s recent writings on hospitality. For both thinkers, there is no natural geographical scene for the cultivation of responsibility. Rather, their shared focus upon temporality emphasizes the degree to which responsibility is motivated in response to the activities of others. The implication of this argument is that critical analysis should be reoriented towards practices that shape individual and collective dispositions to acknowledge the claims of others

Patterns of Social Capital in West German Regions

Blume L, Sack D. Patterns of Social Capital in West German Regions. European Urban and Regional Studies. 2008;15(3):229-248.Social capital is often defined as consisting of trust and postmaterialist values on the one hand, and social networks on the other hand. This article examines how different governance modes such as networks, markets, and hierarchies are related to trust and postmaterialist values in 74 West German regions. A principle component analysis of 40 social capital indicators shows that trust and postmaterialist values do not solely combine with networks but also with preferences for markets and hierarchies. A cluster analysis identifies two dominant types of regional social capital in West German regions. These types are different from the well-known Italian patterns described by Robert Putnam in his seminal work. In the period 1995-2002, the annual economic growth in regions which have combined trust with preferences for strong markets and weak political networks was on average 1 percent higher than in regions with inverted preferences