A grammar for non-teleological geographies: Differentiating the divergence of intention and outcomes in the everyday

Abstract

Teleology shapes the design of much geographical research through the requirement to identify outcomes. In contrast, the theoretical orientation of geographical research on the everyday promotes a relational and visceral approach to resist the teleological logic of the primacy of outcomes. With this paper, we address this tension between different orientations to the practice of geographical research. Drawing on three case studies of empirical research we propose a grammar for non-teleology to capture the divergence of intentions and outcomes. Giving rise to non-teleological narratives, we suggest, signifies a forward orientation for doing geographical research to unpick the messiness of everyday life.

Possibilities of urban research: Temporal difference and the politics of the future

“…A non-teleological approach, as Holdsworth and Hall (2022: 1052) note, ‘implicitly brings the temporal into interpreting practice in a non-linear way’ thereby unsettling political or normative codes of how people should respond to a given situation. Although not described as such, Jon's concern to discover the multiple histories, plural realities and diversity of visions that exist concurrently in Greater Dandenong is aligned with this (re)new(ed) concern within the social sciences, and thereby attends to ‘the complexities of time and becoming’ (Grosz, 2000: 230).…”

Comics and Zines for Creative Research Impact

“…We are also mindful that impact is a nebulous concept with socially and culturally contingent meanings (see Cook et al 2014, Pain 2014 and that claims of impact need to always be socially and spatially mediated; impact on what, for whom and to what ends? We urge for a reconsideration of impact as an outcome and end point (see Holdsworth and Hall 2022). In this, we also seek to bring forward critical discussions about impact as innovative, accessible and meaningful, and as such creative impact can be a force for destabilising norms of 'productivity' within academia (see The Autonomous Geographies Collective 2010).…”

The hopes of memorial remaking: Product, process, and the temporal rhythms of making

“…Reworking this trinity into a rhythmical account of making threads together the processes of starting, accomplishing, repeating and finishing, and enables me to stitch together how these rhythms of practice are orientated towards making some thing . Following Lefebvre (2004), developing a sense for the rhythm of making opens up the time of making beyond the practice of doing in the present towards a relational conceptualisation of temporality that flows between the focus of doing and the intention of moving towards an intended outcome (Holdsworth & Hall, 2022). This synthesis between present and future is captured though the expression of hope (Alacovska, 2019) to open a eurhythmic flow between practice and product.…”