postmodernism and constructivism caveats
p268-269 On some basic level, all social sciences since at least Durkheim have or at least should be constructivist in their self-understanding (see also Hacking 2000). That is, accept the idea that the social world is a humanly constructed (i.e., not naturally or essentially given) reality, that our very methods of data gathering, categorization, and representation themselves construct in a certain way. It accepts that social scientists are a part of the social world they are constructing knowledge-- and techniques of knowledge gathering-- about. But it is no less real for that, and no less true when successful, especially if these techniques are embedded in a socially shared habitus of scientific practice (as opposed to literary, journalistic, political practice, etc.), that sustain the autonomous social power of recognized academic work (see (Bourdieu et al. 1977).
What a constructivist empiricism might enable is a rethinking of migration theory that helps us rebuild a more politically autonomous and scientific form of studying the subject, while not letting go of the incontrovertible need for a less disciplinary and more global approach. The point here is that we do not want to endorse procedures or methods that remove for us the very material "fact" that migration is something that happens when a real (physical) person moves in real (physical) space. While one can accept the point that Susan Hardwick might make, that all geographies in the end are collective social representations of space, which are thus socially relative and mental in nature, it would go too far to suggest that space itself is a wholly subjective or mentally constructed fiction. People move, and the material physical distance of those moves matter, as do the physical borders that separate different social units in space and define what counts as spatial movement. The postmodern cultural turn in population geography, in rejecting the "objectivist" or "positivist" old geography, unfortunately has tended to want to collapse all material space into socially constructed space, thus in a sense negating geography's most interesting and valuable contribution to the social sciences.
the most photographed barn
p 12 Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in America. We drove twenty-two miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were forty cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides-- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.
"No one sees the barn," he said finally.
A long silence followed.
"Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."
He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced at once by others.
"We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."
There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.
"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism."
Another silence ensued.
"They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.
He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers that advanced the film.
"What was the barn like before it was photographed?" he said. "What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. We're part of the aura. We're here, we're now."
He seemed immensely pleased by this.
