This is a place for sociological sketches and reflections through which I hope, if circuitously, to develop and deepen the working concept ‘Ecologies of Possibility’. At the moment, I’m using the phrase as a means of helping me think about the ways history and space combine in given locations and moments to condition what may or may not take place there. It’s also a means of thinking about how these locations and moments are layered and interwoven, how they interact, irritate or resonate with each other. These locations and moments range from micro to macro-levels of the social. Each is a circumstance in which what might or might not happen is subject to specific sets of factors particular to the location and moment.
This of course is true for any identifiable social phenomenon, period, occurrence, fact – anything of the social exists in a field of possibility that has spatial and historical determinants. What I’m hoping to do by using this phrase – and by doing so maintaining it as something useful, despite its expansive, catch-all nature – is to emphasise and hold in attention the dimension of possibility in the social, and to make evident the relationships between what’s possible at the micro scale to what’s possible at the macro scale. Hopefully this will aid the process of identifying what could and should be changed at these different scales in order to produce better ecologies of possibility.
As I launch the site there are four essay-sketches for you to have a look at and I’ll add more when I can. The extant ones are surprisingly long (I hadn’t expected them to be when I started writing) but I’ll be aiming to get some shorter, snappier sketches up here soon. There’s also a couple of short pieces about how the concept itself is evolving, which will probably themselves evolve as I develop a better idea of what it is I’m trying to get at. Thanks for visiting, for reading and I hope you’re glad you came!
Latest Posts
- Stabs at a definition
I’ve had a couple of goes of constructing a formal definition of ecologies of possibility, but as yet I think it’s a little early to offer something really nailed-down. It’s an ongoing process and I’ll check in here to refine, polish, deconstruct and reconstruct definitions as they occur to me. Stab #1 An ecology of… Continue Reading → - To-Do List for the Concept Ballroom
Ecologies of possibility, as a debutante concept, is at risk of entering the concept ballroom and immediately treading on toes and making embarrassing faux pas. In order to save face and to be accepted onto the concept circuit, some considered engagement is going to have to take place with those who already know the score…. Continue Reading → - A Case of the Social: The times, agency, the mainstream and discipline
I like to think about an ecology of possibility as a ‘case of the social’. I once misread an article by John Pløger as stating that Foucault considered his concept of ‘dispositif’ (an apparatus of discourses, norms, technologies, objects etc. comprising some element of strategic organisational concern, e.g. ‘Transport’) as pertaining to any given ‘case… Continue Reading → - Ecologies of Possibility: Interpretation of a bit of a road
The phrase ‘ecologies of possibility’ popped into my head when walking around Manchester, doing fieldwork for my PhD. I was trying to conceptualise the way different traces of different eras of living are layered in the built environment, representing different rationalities of governance, different sets of material conditions, different possibilities for what might be. I’d… Continue Reading → - Case 1: On the way to Piccadilly
There’s a series of pedestrian crossings on the way to Piccadilly Station in Manchester where, due to the high flows of pedestrians at certain points in the day, there tends to be a fairly chaotic relationship between pedestrians and traffic. This stretch of street, the passing pedestrians, drivers, vehicles, the intersecting junctions and the infrastructure… Continue Reading →
Ecologies of Possibility 