The Magnussonian Approach
Ross Beveridge (University of Glasgow)
Warren Magnusson’s contribution to scholarship on (urban) politics was substantial. He was a brilliant writer and a highly original thinker. Daring even. I remember first encountering his work in the paper “The Symbiosis of the Urban and the Political” (Magnusson 2014) and being genuinely taken aback (is he really arguing that the urban is the only way to envisage the political? Okay…). It took a while to digest this seemingly outlandish argument, so different from other strands of scholarship on urban politics (let alone politics per se). A real engagement with his work requires a commitment, a willingness to break not only with mainstream scholarship but also sometimes with more critical strands with which he nevertheless shared political sympathies. I was never fortunate enough to meet him – my occasional emails were always answered in friendly and encouraging tones – but I wondered if he quite enjoyed being apart from the crowd: the leftist scholar who cited Hayek, the political theorist who wrote about urbanism, the urbanist who wrote about Vancouver Island, the resident of the small Canadian city of Victoria who saw the world as one giant city. His eclecticism was part of his strength even as it no doubt removed him from academic “scenes.” I am not sure when exactly it started but, no doubt in recognition of this originality, the term Magnussonian crept into my conversations with collaborators and colleagues. What might it mean, then, to be Magnussonian? What kind of commitment could it entail?
The first, and most fundamental, element in any definition of being Magnussonian would be that (1) we can never fully know politics – and this has implications not only for researching politics but also for doing politics. From this, comes the next: (2) there is no entity, no state, that can fully know and order politics – sovereignty is impossible. This is Magnusson’s most well-known, if still provocative, formulation: the state is only one horizon of politics and source of authority, one of many folded into each other in a complex, sporadically susurrous, yet causally cacophonous topography of politics; otherwise known as the “City.” This latter formulation, and the plea to See Like a City, and not like a state, is Magnusson’s most obvious intellectual legacy. It leads him to argue, sometimes almost in the anarchist vein of David Graeber, that through abandoning sovereignty we can embrace new forms of political self-organization.
But as important as this contribution was, this is Magnusson only in a nutshell, a beginning rather than an end. There is so much to glean from a (re)reading of his work, to think with him as he asks questions few other scholars ask. We should never overlook his earlier work, notably the wonderful co-edited and co-written A Political Space: Reading the Global through Clayoquot Sound (Magnusson and Shaw 2002). Of course, much of our attention will fall on his seminal The Politics of Urbanism (2011). Here, Magnusson not only addresses statists (and political scientists) but also activists (and leftist thinkers) with his appeal to disown sovereignty. His point is simple but devastating: we may be able to change the world, but we can never fully direct that change or know its outcome. Politics, for Magnusson, is far too contingent upon far too many moving parts to obey rules of theory or ideological commitment, let alone force of will. We have to ask ourselves: What does this mean for politics, and for the scholarly left? (to whom Magnusson belonged). How can we build a democratic and just politics of transformation when we cannot know where politics will lead? If Magnusson never provided a clear answer, the potency and originality of the question demands our continuing attention. It is such a compelling and vital problematic, so thoroughly resonant today in the contemporary impasse in progressive scholarship about the city and politics more generally. It is also tribute to the final element of a Magnussonian approach (3) being bold, using scholarship to ask difficult questions, rather than demonstrating fealty to a theory or movement. While this brings occasional difficulties in his work (was it really necessary to engage with Hayek as much?), it also provides a critical, self-reflective, and generative edge to his legacy.
This was apparent in what might be one of his last pieces of written work (Magnusson 2024), and what a privilege it was that he responded to a paper I co-authored with Philippe Koch with a very Magnussonian title: Seeing Democracy Like a City (Beveridge and Koch 2024). Magnusson’s focus in his piece was an absence in ours: can an urbanized democracy really deal with the crises confronting the world today? He appears almost to be asking the question of his own work as much as ours, reflecting critically on the legacy his insights provide. Can we confront the challenges of climate emergency, of Gaza, of Trump through the city, he asks? As he stresses his doubts even in his hopes, it is easy to agree with him in our anxious times. It is, as he would no doubt say, difficult to be certain about anything, and no person, scholar or sovereign can provide us with the definitive answer.
Nonetheless, in his own distinctive way, Magnusson has provided political theory, urban theory and leftist thinking with so much to consider, so many questions to ponder and so many daring moves with which we might try to inch forward. As I reflect on what a non-sovereign politics of the city might look like, and how it might compete with the state, I hope that his work reaches the even wider audience that it deserves. To this purpose, and to conclude, I hope that the term Magnussonian might come to enter scholarly discourse and be defined as follows: (1) a disavowal of certainty in knowing politics, (2) a disavowal of sovereignty as the organizing force of politics, and (3) a disavowal of conformity in political thinking, a boldness in scholarship.
References
Beveridge, Ross. and Koch, Philippe. 2024. Seeing democracy like a city. Dialogues in Urban Research, 2(2): 145-163. https://doi.org/10.1177/27541258231203999
Magnusson, Warren, and Karena Shaw, eds. 2002. A Political Space: Reading The Global Through Clayoquot Sound. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Magnusson, Warren. 2011. Politics of Urbanism: Seeing Like a City. New York: Routledge.
Magnusson, Warren. 2014. "The Symbiosis of the Urban and the Political." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38 (5): 1561–1575. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12144.
Magnusson, Warren. 2024. "Seeing the city and democracy: A commentary." Dialogues in Urban Research 2 (2): 181–183. https://doi.org/10.1177/27541258241233497.
Ross Beveridge is Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies, University of Glasgow and author, with Philippe Koch, of How Cities Can Transform Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2022).