Language-games, geography, and making sense of the Arctic

Abstract

Geography is closely tied to language: denominations, definitions, and metaphors are all part of conditioning spatial understandings. In recent years, critical geographers have also highlighted that there is much more to geography than its representation. One philosopher whose work centred on the relationship between language and practice, meaning and use, was Ludwig Wittgenstein. Yet, explicit engagement with his thought has been modest in geography. This article argues that Wittgenstein's later philosophy of language offers useful contributions to the study of geography. It focuses on a space presently undergoing rapid "spatialisation", the Arctic, and draws on articulations by Norwegian state personnel, policy papers, and speeches. Using Wittgenstein's concept of "language-games", the paper demonstrates how spatial understandings are closely tied to practice, while political practices themselves are as much about knowing how to use language. The aim here is neither to unmask any hidden meaning nor to arrive at any one definition, but rather to highlight how meaning lies in terms' use. In order to "make sense of" seemingly competing names, definitions, and sayings, these must be seen in light of different practices. However, as socially defined, the "rules" may also change. This is arguably where the potential and political purchase of Wittgenstein's thought lies: in emphasising how geographical meaning is made through social and political interaction.

“I show you my coast…”—a relational study of coastscapes in the North Frisian Wadden Sea

“…Such a "not-in-the-head-understanding" of language (Süsswein and Racine 2009) holds strong conceptual links with more-than-representational and relational approaches to landscape (MacPherson 2010) and place (Medby 2019) as also expressed in Thrift's ecology of place: "Non-representational theory arises from the simple […] observation that we cannot extract a representation of the world from the world because we are slap bang in the middle of it […] We act to think, and we only think we think to act because we have let some quite specific forms of life colonize our notion of what constitutes […] [landscape]" (Thrift 1999: 296-297). In sum, enlanguaged meanings are interactive and place-based processes of situated language games that interlace coastal dwellers and their dwelt-in coastscapes, while the ecology of place puts emphasis on how places like coastscapes are shaped and articulated through the social practice of language games.…”

Is Arctic governance research in crisis? A pathological diagnosis

“…Moreover, different schools and traditions could more engage with each other to form a cumulative body of knowledge and avoid a piecemeal approach to empirical analysis. Several scholars very recently made a start and turned in new directions to see through the simultaneous practices of cooperation, integration, fragmentation, dissent and rivalry in the Arctic region by making recourse to concepts and theories from social movement research (Wilson Rowe, 2020), cultural studies (Hansen-Magnusson, 2019), political geography (Dodds, 2019;Dodds & Woon, 2019;Väätänen, 2019), Foucauldian governmentality (Albert & Vasilache, 2018) or the philosophy of language (Medby, 2019). These works indicate that the field of AGR is maturing and moving beyond simple description.…”

Planting flags in water

“…Yet the idea of the ocean as a frontier has a long historyand one that has nearly always included the imperial practice of planting of flags (Steinberg, 2001(Steinberg, , 2018. Geographers and environmental historians working on the Arctic have vividly illustrated how state sovereignty has come to dominate the frames through which we understand claims to Arctic waters (Demuth, 2019a(Demuth, , 2019bDodds, 2010a;Dodds and Nuttall, 2015;Kelman, 2017;Medby, 2018Medby, , 2019. But as these scholars also show, the unstable and unpredictable patterns of ice melt and water flows has always complicated the aspirational claims of political leaders speaking from dry land.…”