The diorama – conceptualizing political space with a more unified ontology

Central to the construction of the diorama model is Hägerstrand’s time-geography. Therefore, below follows a brief overview of some of his key concepts. These concepts sensitize us to the time-geographic patterns of the professional orders and lay the ground for an analytical framework of order based on a unified ontology. Hence, to an ontology that is also adhering to the classical view of order emphasizing the unitary whole that the natural and the “human” order are perfectly at one (cf. Rengger

89 Donnelly also emphasizes the centrality of space but maintains the use of structures. He finds that “political structures establish/represent the fundamental relations of force and authority in a system” (2009:55). He understands differentiation as “the social process of distinguish between people (and groups) according to the social statuses they occupy” (ibid.). Moreover, he argues that the structures of heterarchy are unit differentiation (who counts), as well as vertical differentiation (how much do those who count count) and functional differentiation (what do those who count do) (2009:73). In this inquiry, I look for structures in a similar way. Still, my unified ontology and diorama incorporating deep frames as well as constitutive materiality is another proposal for a framework of space and deep structures, and possibly more composite, alongside Donnelly’s suggested “3-2 structures” of three times differentiation, plus norms and institutions plus geography and technology (2009:77). The point is however the same, to characterize heterarchy. Hall suggests using the concepts of process, configuration, project and yoking for analyzing political space (2004). This can be related to the diorama concept that I use to make sense of my observations. However, I will not delve into contrasting similarities and differences here. Instead, I will explore how the diorama operates and serves as an analytical tool in the illustrative example of outer space.

2000:4ff).⁹⁰ In this fabric of the constitutive materiality, the concept of a diorama helps us to illuminate a part in which order unfolds.

Hägerstrand’s time-geography, in this inquiry, is essentially about what conditions possibilities for interplay. It enlightens us about how the sociality can materialize and take place (Hägerstrand 2009:29). For example, who will be in a certain place at a certain time. Simply because you can only be at one place at the time and only you can be at your place, and now is only now. This seems obvious, but as Hägerstrand argues, “[s]ocial scientists know very little about interaction of constrains, as seen from the point of life-path of the individual. […] I think it is true to say that the system of domains is much better understood with respect to flows of goods and money than with respect to flows of people. […]. In the main, people are viewed as parts of activities to be performed within each domain in isolation, and not as entities who need to make sense out of their paths between and through domains” [my emphasis] (1991:152). Hägerstrand’s overall thinking and his theory of the all-encompassing ‘web of being’ or fabric is the philosophical foundation for my analysis of the emerging outer space order.

Accordingly:

It is not fruitful to comprehend the fabric by examining only one short trajectory in isolation. The key is to study how these converge and diverge, emerge and decay/cease to exist in longer periods. The patterns that then surface help us to discern big and small, persistent and temporary […]. The picture will however not be complete before we also note what alternatives are filtered away. […]. The fundamental question that the concept of fabric brings fore is thus, how the front of the fabric– ‘the edge’ towards the future– evolves, not just trajectory by trajectory […] but in its full situational breadth. How do the spatial processes and the temporal flow of ‘nows’ affect each other? [my translation]

(Hägerstrand, 2009:129).

90 Let us also notice that the discussion, so far, has mainly been outlining the core and conceptualizations of social order, which is understandable, and intuitively correct, as IR falls under the social sciences, and given that “everybody seems to accept the demarcation between natural science and social sciences” (Hägerstrand, 1991:196).

However, if the conception of order within IR did encompass the constitutive materiality, I believe our understanding of the contemporary world and its challenges would be further enhanced, as every order is fundamentally dependent on what constitutes it.

According to this perspective of the world, as a dense fabric of trajectories in interplay, everything and everyone is in touch with each other and must pass through the present as well as become one single web of being. This makes traditional separations, distinctions and categories dissolve (Hägerstrand, 2009:134). Then, when looking for what the constitutive materiality (the fabric) permits to take place, principal patterns of continuance surface. Thus, there are to be some principal patterns in the steady passage from the past to the future. The observer’s question is “What orders are taking place in every now?” (Hägerstrand, 2009:133).

Hägerstrand uses the concept of landscape to capture the wholeness and diorama for the “thereness” (situation). Different Paths and projects (see below) move the fabric forward. A landscape is “the grand situation in which the initiator of the project finds himself and constitutes the conditions of his actions” (Hägerstrand, 1982:325). Notably, a landscape should be understood in a much wider, indiscriminate and inclusive sense than conventionally done. A wider understanding includes what is very close, even what is hidden and what is distant (like the human body subjects, the clouds, and stars). A landscape makes no sharp distinction between nature and society (Hägerstrand, 1982:325f). However, since

‘landscape’ in common language is used mainly for nature, to incorporate every entity, including humans, Hägerstrand uses the concept of diorama.

Diorama is an all-encompassing concept, suitable for a more unified ontology.

Diorama is originally a term for arrangements of animals and people suspended in their natural environments found in museums (Hägerstrand, 1982:326). The fruitfulness of diorama is not in the visual properties but in the “thereness”, as “[a]ll sorts of entities are in touch with each other in a mixture produced by history, whether visible or not” (1982:326). A diorama closely illuminates a certain part of the fabric, in this case, the emerging outer space order. By making explicit the grains of the diorama, aggregated patterns otherwise hidden will become evident. To an outsider, what the insider finds too familiar, will be of interest for capturing the fine-grained structures of the diorama. These, in turn, can be quite apart from “the specific intentions the actors might have had when they conceived and launched project out from their different positions” (ibid.). Nevertheless, “[i]n the configuration of grains in the diorama lies one of the keys to its subsequent transformation” [emphasis

in original] (1982:326).⁹¹ As a result “[s]ituations and projects move the diorama forward in time and gradually change it into something partly or totally different” (ibid.).⁹²

Path (or trajectory) is used to help us appreciate “the significance of continuity in succession of situations […] it refers not only to man but to all other packages of continuants which fill up our world […]. Continuity and corporality set limits on how and at what pace one situation can evolve into a following [situation] in a pure physical sense” (Hägerstrand 1982:323). Although abstract, Hägerstrand reminds us of the ‘lived corporeality’ of societies and humans, almost totally neglected in human and social sciences (ibid.) People are not paths, but they cannot avoid drawing them in time-space trajectories (Hägerstrand, 1982:324). A project are events that happen due to human strivings and desires for purpose and meaning (ibid.). A project “is meant to tie together all those

‘cuts’ in evolving situations that actors must secure in order to reach a goal” (ibid.). Thus, projects have agent properties, and the term is therefore in this conceptualization synonymous to the professional orders.

These orders like all other “packages of continuants” draw paths/trajectories in time-space (1982:232).

To Hägerstrand “the situation is undetermined until the project defines it.

On the other hand, to what extent an initiator of the project can bring it to the desired end will depend on what events the subsequent situations permit from movement to movement” [my emphasis] (1982:325). Thus, a diorama should make visual the pacesetters, pace and sequences in the landscape. A central aspect is the temporal and spatial availability of others, as well as their non-availability (Hägerstrand 1982:331 & 333). It should picture the weekly patterns of individuals and things such as train arrivals, workhours, distances, time and non-institutionalized time – free time projects. It should also include expressions of authority, symbols, gates and influence (1982:333). When adding the dimension of the relative strength of projects in competition and given that certain values and technology limit the room, a diorama illustrates the possibility for projects to even be initiated (cf. Hägerstrand, 1982:337). Especially, in situations when the room is limited, in what Hägerstrand conceptualizes

91 Before looking at the reflectivity between the more limited situations and projects, we have to picture the general situation, the landscape.

92 Relatedly, Ruggie argues that system transformation requires that the contingent nature of structures situated in time and space be made transparent (1998:875).

as the “waist of the sandglass” (or the neck of the hourglass). In this narrow passage from past to future, the competition among grains increases (Hägerstrand, 2009:165ff). ⁹³

Hence, Hägerstrand’s time-geography reveals valuable patterns about the possibility of interplay. To me, it implies that an order is the existing situation –an arrangement of things–of reality. A diorama illuminates the details in the environment, what brought them there and in what direction they are heading. Principally, Hägerstrand’s thinking is vital for my analytical framework. His philosophy captures endless materiality of patterns, sequences and relative positions defining situations and configurations. These, I find are the deep distributive structure of time and space as well as positions and relations.⁹⁴ Together with the deep frames, it is possible to trace and cut into patterns of power and influence – the fabric of order.

With the conceptualization of a diorama and the deep frames of the projects, we can detect not only how positions and patterns of relations change but also how the character of the units themselves change.

Moreover, the deep frames enable and constrain the actors as well as indicate their direction into the time of becoming. This inquiry also emphasizes authority within and between the professional orders, which in turn facilitates an analysis of possibilities for political order. There is no predefined system, nor order or structure ‘above’, but the order is constituted horizontally in the grains of the diorama. Diorama, in my theorizing, serves to conceptualize the political space in which order unfolds. Together with deep frames, a diorama conditions deep agency and thus the direction of an order.⁹⁵ Before we move on, this rather philosophical conceptual elaboration and ‘behind the language vocabulary’ need to be made slightly more concrete. In the next section, I

93 Hägerstrand gives the analogy of families waiting for their turn to take a bath at a small beach during warm summer days. The point is that in human societies, there is limited space at certain times - due to values and technicalities (1982:337). “When trying to understand what Giddens, Pred and others call ‘structuration’ it is therefore an essential task to study relative strength of projects in competition. But then the factors at work can be fully appreciated only in a diorama perspective” (ibid).

94 The principle of distribution is “how units stand in relation to each other, the way they are arranged and positioned” (Waltz, 1979:80).

95 Deep agency is possessed by the units in the position to define the direction of a diorama.

introduce a conceptual model of a diorama, which also summarizes this conceptual elaboration.