Pacifying Babel's Tower: Lessons for
comparative urbanism
Michiel van
Meeteren (Ghent University)
Ate
Poorthuis (University of Kentucky)
Ben
Derudder (Ghent University)
Frank
Witlox (Ghent University)
In our paper 'Pacifying Babel's
Tower: A scientometric analysis of polycentricity in urban research', we
analyze the origins of the fuzziness of the concept of polycentricity in urban
studies. While seemingly little more than an adjective to describe the
multi-cored character of settlements, the term 'polycentricity' disguises the
much thornier and fundamental question of defining the notion of ‘city’ itself.
This masking of a different debate suggests that, as a community of urban
scholars, we have been talking past each other for a long time – hence our reference
to Babel's Tower. We assume that we are discussing the same object, but are in
fact often not. The paper extensively draws on the work of political scientist
Giovanni Sartori (and his interlocutors) from which the notions of 'conceptual
stretching', and 'Babel's Tower' are derived[1]. While conducting this
research, we increasingly became convinced that Sartori's oeuvre might be able
to provide important resolutions to some of the methodological issues plaguing
(comparative) urban studies and human geography more widely (an insight that has
proven productive elsewhere). In this post, as an extension of
our paper, we explore the broader implications of Babylonian confusions caused
by conceptual stretching for comparative research in urban studies.
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The
Tower of Babel (1563) by Pieter Breugel the Elder, Illustration used for the cover of Collier and Gerring's (2009)
appreciation of the oeuvre of Giovanni Sartori. (Source: Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Tower_of_Babel_(Vienna)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg Accessed 23/03/2015)
Polycentricity is a concept that
fits comfortably in the methodological toolbox of comparative urbanism. It
provides a seemingly coherent yardstick to compare urban regions. Of course, in
a strict ontological sense, every city in the world is unique. However, finding
similarities and differences between places allows us to abstract from these
unique and concrete realities. Based on these abstractions, we then define wider
'urban processes' that serve to structure the debates in our field of research.
The crucial point in these abstractions is to avoid what Sartori calls 'miscomparing':
drawing undue conclusions regarding similarity or difference.
Miscomparing can either take the
form of a wrong 'case definition' (the answer to the question 'what is this a
case of?', which leads to the proverbial comparing of apples and oranges, or a wrong
'case scoring' (assessing how this case compares to others, a kind of
measurement error). When a specific miscomparison is routinely made (as has happened
in the debate on urban polycentricity), it is solidified in the literature and may
consequently become 'paradigmatic'. In this way, reminiscent of Kuhn's description
of scientific revolutions, communities of researchers may collectively and
unknowingly hold on to a theoretical proposition that ought to be revised given
the available empirical evidence.
By way of example, let us consider an
'institutionalized miscomparison' identified in our paper that can potentially
influence comparative urban studies in a detrimental way. In the polycentricity
debate, differences between American and European contexts have commonly been
overstated, despite the fact that the processes behind polycentricity are very
similar across contexts. Because the processes behind polycentricity overlay distinct
historical trajectories, incorrect assessments of difference between Europe and
the United States have been made when studying the concrete situation 'on the
ground'. At the correct level of abstraction (in this instance this involves comparing
changing agglomeration-economy regimes across contexts), these cases should
have been labeled as the 'same', whereas an empiricist assessment has led to a
conclusion of 'difference'.
In general terms, this example
highlights once again how the adopted theoretical and methodological perspective
determines the results of comparative research. Miscomparing can result in
accepting 'wrong' theory as 'valid', similar to type II errors in statistics, a
concern that is at the heart of postcolonial critiques in urban studies, for
example in the interventions of Jennifer Robinson or Ananya Roy. But it can similarly lead to type
I errors: rejecting 'right' theory as 'invalid'. The polycentricity debate is
one such example; another possibly arises if one takes too literally Roy’s sweeping
suggestion that 'EuroAmerican theories' of the city cannot be used to say something
useful about cities in Asia.
Therefore the most important
conclusion of our study, which transcends the more narrow confines of the polycentricity
debate, is that (as Sartori would phrase it) the proper application of the ‘ladder
of abstraction’ is of paramount importance. We should always ask: are
we comparing the same thing across contexts? If not, then we end up comparing
apples to oranges, leading to erroneous conclusions about similarity and
difference. This is remedied by abstraction, which results in the equally
fascinating activity of comparing fruits.
[1] A wonderful
introduction to Sartori's work on comparitivism is Collier & Gerring's 2009
edited volume Concepts and Method in Social Science.
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