Situating Method

Abstract

Abstract Taking as its starting point the discussion of capitalist variegation and uneven development in Chapter 9, this chapter focuses squarely on questions of research design and methodology in geographical political economy, focusing in particular on the complementary approaches of relational comparison and conjunctural analysis. Relational comparison and conjunctural analysis each seek to explain, intervene, and theorize through the grounded but also structured contexts of place, positionality, and situation. Relational comparisons engage the stretched-out nature of social relations across space, while conjunctural analyses characteristically engage specific social formations, typically during moments of stress or crisis. They each tend to operate in the middle ranges of the explanatory register, being wary of unprincipled induction on the one hand and unmoored abstraction on the other, seeking instead to engage through situated analyses of articulation, intersection, and contestation. They do this in their somewhat different ways by “analyzing situations,” variously taking account of multiple (and more or less proximate) sources of causality, the mediating roles of politics and social struggle, the complex play of history, and the interdependencies of uneven spatial development.