Disambiguating the southern urban critique: Propositions,pathways and possibilities for a more global urban studies

Proposition 1: Speaking from the south is an argument against (all/northern) theory and in favour of particularism and empiricism

We begin with this null claim in order to insist that we find no evidence of urban scholars articulating this position. We name it to clarify where the southern urban critique has been misinterpreted (e.g. Roy (2016) argues that Scott and Storper (2015) misread her own work), and to distinguish it from the propositions below. Scholars of southern cities have indeed been critiqued for an excessive focus on data, or ‘objectivism’ (Brenner et al., 2011; see also Bernt’s (2016) problematic framing of Ghertner’s work on gentrification as ‘very particular’), for not linking findings to larger (structural) explanations and frameworks. More widely, scholars such as Robinson have been misapprehended as proposing ‘an urban studies which is idiographic, provincial, nominalist, and comparative’ (Smith, 2013: 2301). Leaving aside the final term, we (with others, e.g. Roy, 2016) argue that this is a misreading of the southern urban critique. We do not disagree that many studies in and of southern cities, including and beyond those cited by Brenner et al. (2011), are largely empirical. Yet, importantly, the authors of these texts do not argue that this empiricism is the logical endpoint for such studies; it is our contention that, equally, they do not believe this is the logical endpoint. ³

Why does it continue to be the case that it is difficult to theorise southern cities? It is important to bear in mind that the vast majority of research has been and continues to be done in northern contexts (and that there is inequality within this grouping too, for we understand more about Western than Eastern Europe, more about big cities than small ones (e.g. Bell and Jayne, 2009; Ferenčuhová, 2016). This is no doubt linked to tremendous global inequalities in resources, limiting the number of scholars based in southern institutions and their ability to fund and make time for deep scholarly engagement. The weight of colonial educational systems (which had different policies, practices and local impacts over time, space, race and ethnicity) surely also continues to shape global knowledge production. It is also worth noting the impact of reviews and audience: imagine the limitations on writing about New York if each article had to describe its colonial history, provide a population count and familiarise the reader with the American political system. In sum, for both intellectual and institutional reasons, while we know more about some places than others, most of the global south remains particularly under-studied or at least under-represented in international academic forums (Alperin, n.d.; Caillods, 2016).

This can contribute to a tendency in the literature to overgeneralise from small studies and hastily develop (inappropriate) policy recommendations (Pieterse, 2011). Further, the politics of knowledge production has largely contributed to a situation in which substantial effort has been put into critiquing the shortcomings of existing theoretical explanations as a precursor to developing alternative explanations (see Mabin, 2014). In this context, there are very real concerns as to what constitutes sufficient data from which to responsibly and rigorously theorise (Pieterse, 2011). Important to our analysis here, these are questions of degree, not essence: more empirics are needed not as an endpoint, but as the basis for deep understanding, context-based analysis and more rigorous theorisation (although, as we explore further below, there are differences within this intellectual community regarding what precisely it is possible to theorise).

Finally, it bears repeating that we find no evidence of the southern urban critique rejecting northern theory in totality. Foundational, well-cited authors even use the ideas of northern scholars to develop their critique (e.g. postcolonial theorists Said and Chakrabarty draw extensively on Foucault)! What underpins these concerns is not a renunciation of learning and theorising across space, but a demand for more careful consideration of how theory travels, and what can/ought to happen when it does (Bunnell, 2013; Clifford, 1989; Lawhon et al., 2016; Said, 1983).

Proposition 2: The south is empirically different

This proposition is based on the argument that southern cities are socially, materially, culturally, politically and/or historically different from northern cities. ⁴ Here, the south is deployed as a geographical location that is relational, although any neat lines have been widely challenged. Demographic arguments about increased urbanisation trends or arguments about institutional inequalities across universities, for example, are largely rooted in the deployment of the south as a location, albeit one that is relationally produced. Schindler (2017: 48) and Watson (2009) are emblematic in arguing that empirical difference matters. For example, Schindler proposes a set of ‘tendencies’ that can be seen across a number of southern cities. These include urban governance regimes geared towards the transformation of territory (rather than populations), dynamic metabolic configurations and the co-constitution of materiality and political economy that upset explanations that privilege either context or theory above the other (expressing the simultaneous need for both). These different empirics, he argues, require different theories and even a different ‘paradigm’ to explain them: rather than deducing explanations from existing frameworks, more data is needed as the basis for inductive theorisation that can then be mobilised to counter, amend and create dialogue with theories derived from the north.

Some studies that forefront southern difference do so as a means to displace concept-analytics and ideologies derived from the north. Rather than elaborating something similar to Schindler’s ‘tendencies’ that can be applied to cities of the south more broadly, other authors provide tailored explanations of phenomena in cities or sets of cities within one country. For example, Parnell and Robinson (2012) take to task the idea that neoliberalism is an overarching ideology that explains urban transformation in South Africa. The authors do not deny that neoliberalism is a political economic philosophy that may well have advocates everywhere, and that it may well influence policy everywhere. In fact, they concede that it may be reasonable and productive to consider neoliberalism and its impacts globally. However, their central contention is that even where neoliberalism is prevalent, its explanatory power is not ubiquitous, and at times the concept insufficiently explains the causality of urban outcomes. Here, approaches that place neoliberalism as the deductive cause prevent an inductive view of other drivers of change (see also Lawhon et al., 2016).

In a parallel vein, Ghertner (2015) argues that different empirical conditions mean that theorising large-scale displacement in Indian cities as gentrification obscures meaningfully different processes undergirding spatial change. He demonstrates that most violent forms of displacement are connected to enduring legacies of large-scale public land ownership, common property and mixed-tenure informality. By shifting his analytical gaze, Ghertner shows a wider and more case-specific repertoire of political possibilities for mobilising against displacement. In line with Parnell and Robinson, he argues that these empirical differences inform not only scholarly analyses of what is there, but also the politics of possibility. Exporting the concept-analytic ‘gentrification’ to Indian cities is not only insufficient for revealing a set of logics at work that fuel spatial transformation: exporting this theory also inappropriately guides political action (see also Lawhon et al., 2014, 2018b).

While often framed in terms of north–south differences, much of the concern raised through the lens of empirical differences echoes debates found elsewhere about the ability of scholars to generalise across difference. Robinson (2016a: 4), for example, frames the methodological challenges of urban studies after the southern critique as ‘only a specific case of the more general problem of developing concepts through particular observations across multiple settings or instances’ (see also Bernt (2016) or, more broadly, Tilly (1984)). More specific to spatial studies, there are long-standing debates about the utility of regional approaches. Such approaches have been critiqued, not because they do not (at times) accurately aggregate empirical phenomena, ⁵ but because such categorisations have been argued to offer less to wider theoretical scholarly agendas (Turner, 2002), even if the constructed, temporal and relational category is more nuanced than old-style regional geographies (see a recent special issue edited by Ferenčuhová and Gentile, 2016; Myers, 2011; and Roy and Ong, 2011, for examples of regional approaches to southern cities). Finally, there are implicit parallels to grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967): there is a sense that, if one encounters new data without using existing theorisations, new explanations can emerge.

At their core, critiques of northern urban theory based on empirical difference found in the literature have scholarly parallels throughout the social sciences. They can be sufficient logical grounds for developing southern or regional clusters but are subject to much of the same critiques as regional geography and grounded theory. Such work might be understood to draw on postcolonial theory to explain the primacy of northern explanations or the paucity of data and disciplinary histories that have undervalued southern sites. Our concern with emphasising empirical difference and rooting the southern urban critique here is not that we disagree that empirical differences are real, or that one might usefully group cities as more and less empirically similar. It is that this proposition does not, in itself, challenge the ontology of any conventional approaches to urban studies. When made alone, this proposition calls for better theorisation derived inductively from southern cases to better articulate and explain the southern urban condition. We find this to be a necessary but not sufficient claim and argue that the southern urban critique is strongest when concerns about empirical differences are paired with a deeper critique of the production of knowledge.

Proposition 3: The south has had different intellectual traditions

It is well established that publishing in urban studies, as in most other academic disciplines, requires engagement with existing literatures. Implicitly, for most ‘international’ journals, this means engagement with northern-derived conceptualisations of the city that are not always relevant or applicable to the southern condition (Mabin, 2014; Robinson, 2016b; Schindler, 2014). And yet, throughout the academy, there is a growing critique of such practices and a re-engagement with both scholarly and vernacular understandings from elsewhere (much of this recently through the lens of decolonisation; see Asher, 2013; Jazeel, 2017; Radcliffe, 2017). For decolonial scholars, this is more than just a spatial version of postmodern and poststructural critiques of modernity, and the voices of subalterns (rather than, say, Foucault or Gramsci in the south) are essential to contributing new perspectives (Grosfuguel, 2011).

Historical analyses have provided trenchant critiques of the impact of racism in the development of scholarly knowledge. For the most part, this resulted in views of non-European scholarly and vernacular traditions being studied through anthropology as accounts of cultural myths or historical artefacts (Chakrabarty, 2000). These traditions are primarily studied in rural areas (and even when studied in cities they are framed as ‘rural’ phenomena, for urban residents are assumed to be ‘modern’). Scholars such as Chakrabarty (2000), Comaroff and Comaroff (2011) and Connell (2007) argue that there is a need to re-view these lineages not as artefacts but as bodies of thought with contemporary relevance. Intellectual traditions from elsewhere in and outside the academy are central to expanding our understanding of the world. For example, much recent EuroAmerican social science bears resemblance to non-Western thinking. However, despite concerns about the production of knowledge, none of these authors argue for a pluralisation of knowledge as the endpoint. This is to say, the authors writing in this vein reject relativism, and believe that research on and from the south can lead to better understandings within and across sites. Intellectual traditions from elsewhere should neither exist in parallel with nor be simply subsumed into existing theory. Instead, new ideas, themes, connections and approaches ought to be interwoven (displacing or changing some existing ideas) to produce new, cosmopolitan understandings.

In urban studies, we find this argument most cogently and forcefully articulated in Roy’s (2009) ‘New Geographies of Theory’. In contrast with (although neither in contradiction to nor a necessary logical extension of) calls for more empirical studies, this is a call to investigate already existing knowledges and knowledge traditions across the globe, including attention to ‘how and why particular concepts are produced in particular world-areas’ (Roy, 2009: 821). Such explanations are based on more than empirical difference: different understandings of the urban emerge from history, culture, language, research networks, conferences and so on. For example, Roy argues that the strength of dependency theory in Latin America has shaped the type of Marxism deployed by urbanists: dependency-based theorisations by Latin American urbanists can be explained in part because of the politics and geography of knowledge production rather than because Latin American cities are necessarily more enrolled in relations of dependency than others. Here, the south is again largely framed as a relationally-constructed location which shapes places and theorisations of them; this iteration calls for deeper understandings relationally generated in, through and from these sites.

One might consider Roy’s work as a foundational citation through which scholars of non-EuroAmerican traditions can build a justification for the inclusion of diverse theoretical lineages and vernacular models of knowledge-building (although there are longer debates outside urban studies, such as Garcia-Ramon, 2004; Sidaway et al., 2003). For example, Ernstson et al. (2014) expand on Roy’s framework by further developing conceptual vectors from African cities and African scholarship. Others employ a ‘worlding’ lens (see Roy and Ong’s (2011) edited volume) aimed to specifically recalibrate urban theory through attention to the locatedness of urban models, policy mobilities and governmental rationalities within and across Asian cities. Karpouzoglou and Zimmer (2016) focus on vernacular ways of engaging with wastescapes: these different ways are important to recognise both for their contributions to knowledge as well as because they are differently legitimised by the state. A range of case studies also examine the vernacular ways urbanites see and experience specific southern cities, contest modes of urban development and co-construct the infrastructures of daily life, revealing situated accounts of knowing the city (Cornea et al., 2017; Doshi and Ranganathan, 2017; Truelove, forthcoming).

We find utility in this overall proposition for advancing the southern urban critique beyond calls for consideration of empirical difference. It is useful both for explaining how urban studies got to where it is, and as one avenue through which to root and develop alternative theorisations of cities. But we argue that these two propositions alone – based on empiricism and alternative traditions – are unlikely to radically alter the status quo (which, we recognise, is not necessarily the goal of all scholars advocating the southern urban critique). This is because the modern, rational, colonial gaze continues to shape the ways in which such scholarship is viewed and evaluated – a point we now turn to.

Proposition 4: Researchers need to deconstruct their assumptions with regard to southern (and all) cities

This iteration is based on what we here call ‘deep postcolonial theory’, a strand of postcolonial theory that insists that colonial relations and rationalities are deeply embedded in the present (and which bears similarity to decolonial arguments above). Understandably, there is some seeming impatience amongst scholars across the disciplines (as well as in societies globally) weary of this well-established argument. And yet, scholars advocating deep postcolonial theory continue to remind us that we are all fundamentally shaped by the colonial encounter. We simply cannot expect that reasonable, well-intentioned, learned researchers will (be able to) transcend colonial rationalities by simply looking at more data and developing a culture of openness to new insights (Proposition 2). Nor can we expect scholars to adequately evaluate and integrate other traditions of knowledge (Proposition 3) without explicit attention to the colonial gaze. ⁶

Postcolonial theorists have argued that scholars must interrogate the production both of their own worldview and of the worldview that produces their data (Jazeel and McFarlane, 2010; Spivak, 1999). In the case of urban studies, this means scholarly practice has not accounted for the historical, modernist, EuroAmerican heritage which continues to shape the ways in which researchers encounter not only the global south, but cities in general. As a consequence, research may take place in a postcolonial city, but remain colonial in its outlook: the selection of empirics, mode of data collection, analysis and so on may still be based on a fundamentally problematic rationality (see note 1). As but a simple example, many apartheid planners saw and experienced their cities as rational, efficient, segregated order. Others saw and experienced the same spaces as places of injustice, violence, exclusion. These historical experiences and lineages call attention to the potential of very different aspects and interpretations of the same empirical phenomenon: they will shape what and how phenomena are included, categorised, explained and normatively judged.

And in this we see most clearly a second use of the term ‘global south’. It is, as Connell (2007, drawing on Slater, 2004) argues more generally, as a term and device necessary for the wider analytical project of deconstructing knowledge–power relations. The south, here, is a ‘concept-metaphor’, a set of ideas rather than (or in addition to) location(s) (Roy, 2014, drawing on Sparke, 2007). It can be deployed to signify the specificity of all knowledge-theory by displacing the north as universal and the south as particular/exceptional, an analytical tactic that provincialises dominant theories underwriting global urbanism (Roy and Ong, 2011; Sheppard et al., 2013).

This colonial modern rationality cannot necessarily be overcome, but this does not mean there is nothing we as scholars can do. For example, Lawhon et al. (2016) examine the authors’ processes of ‘unlearning’ as a way of examining the foundational premises of how we approach our research (see Spivak, 1999). In an alternative vein, Chattopadhyay’s (2012) book aptly titled Unlearning the City examines the ways subaltern groups transform, appropriate and co-construct infrastructure in cities, placing such practices at the centre of understanding the urban, rather than the periphery. Such authors argue that more reflexivity about our conceptual categories, our visual gaze, our language, our constructions – the very tools we use to undertake research – is necessary for urban studies. Transcending north–south binaries, the focus of unlearning must not simply be on the who or where of theory but on the assumptions embedded in it (Lawhon et al., 2016; Nagar, 2014). In this sense, the southern urban critique is not about promoting the work of southern scholars, tout court, for southern scholars may also deploy modern colonial rationalist gazes or unreflexively deploy northern-derived assumptions. Equally, this proposition requires the southern urban critique to be seen as a critique that applies to how we study and approach all studies. It is, thus, entirely compatible with, for example, critiques of global knowledge production from Eastern Europe (e.g. Ferenčuhová and Gentile, 2016).

In sum, pre-existing categories of research shape what and how we research (an argument that has also been well-made within feminist theory and methodology). Starting from the south as a location (as a site of empirical difference or alternative knowledge traditions) does not inherently transcend this; juxtaposition can but does not necessarily serve this purpose. Taking this proposition seriously requires not just more research, different social networks or the examination of different intellectual traditions. Moving beyond, but not in conflict with the demand for inductive and inclusive approaches raised above, it argues for a fundamental evaluation of a researcher’s ability to recognise and work to – always imperfectly – obviate the fundamental rationality that informs the so-called north–south encounter.

Certainly, this challenge raises many questions: how can we know when we have adequately unlearned? How can we recognise whether a scholar, or indeed a body of literature, has deeply and appropriately interrogated concepts? At what stage can we move beyond deconstructions and the articulation of new views towards research that usefully intervenes in the world? Far beyond the scope of this article to answer, we suggest that the southern urban critique needs to continue to engage with, and bring increased attention to, these questions as scholarship moves forward in new and exciting ways.

While many scholars have been convinced of one or another of the iterations of the southern urban critique we have outlined above, rethinking the process of urban theory-making remains an ongoing challenge. Beyond rooting this critique, there also remains much uncertainty in terms of what it means for our ability to theorise, and for urban studies as a whole. We turn to these points in what follows.

Southern urbanism is and ought to be studied as a distinct phenomenon

In this mode, the study of southern cities would become (or, to some extent, remain as) a distinctive field. This mode is intellectually compatible with, although it does not require, further partitioning into regional studies (African cities, Asian cities, North American cities and so on). It does not preclude analysis of the relationality between the south and the north (e.g. examination of colonialism and/or dependency). The foundation for this call is usually empirical difference, but it is not incompatible with arguments for diverse traditions (e.g. one might argue that knowledge of African cities applies only to African cities) and deconstructing assumptions (e.g. one might argue that only those in and of the south can truly understand it). Lawhon and Le Roux’s (2019) study of urban geography textbooks might be helpful here for articulating what this vision might look like: at present, most textbooks separate southern content into a special and smaller section at the end. A better urban studies, in this mode, would maintain such distinctions but de-universalise ‘urban theory’ and offer equal weight to southern cases. One might also usefully teach specifically southern or regional courses.

One can undoubtedly find examples of the study of southern cities as distinct, although reading off an ideal mode of urban studies from any specific work is surely imprudent. Schindler (2017), for example, is the strongest we have seen articulating a separate ‘paradigm’ for southern urbanism, while Watson (2009) makes a strong case for urban planning through a ‘southern’ perspective. Similarly, Myers’ (2011) monograph African Cities follows a long-standing effort to define and describe this category as distinct (see also O’Conner, 1983). And yet, Myers queries what urban studies would look like if Lusaka were the postmetropolis, methodologically paralleling Soja’s classic urban work. Doing so challenges any simplistic notions of African studies being relevant only to or for African cities and calls into question, for our purposes here, what the ideal mode of urban studies of the future might be. Are such articulations actually in support of southern or regional urbanism as a distinct field? We suggest that such work may well be understood as a tactical argument towards a different political agenda.

The southern urban critique is an ontological position against universality and asserting the subjectivity and locatedness of all theory

In this articulation, the south is considered to be a source of a wider critique of the production of knowledge. For example, Radhakrishnan (2008) uses the idea of south as a ‘concept-metaphor’ by which new urban theory can emerge which reveals the ‘provincialism of dominance’, working against theoretical orientations that view the north as universal and south as particular/exceptional. In a similar vein, Roy and Ong (2011) propose that the south serve as a signifier of the locatedness of authoritative knowledge (Theory with a capital T), provincialising knowledge domains normatively perceived as universal. The essence of this concern is that all theory is located, and that to undertake research across contexts, we must attend to the locatedness of the researcher and the theory (including concepts, causality and norms).

This proposition is importantly distinct from the null claim (Proposition 1) above. It is not a claim for particularism and denies a binary between the universal and particular; it is an assertion that there is a middle space between these. One might draw, here, on Chakrabarty’s urging for investigations between History I and History II. Here, History I is the more well-known story of capitalism: a story abstracted from Marx’s analysis of a particular location. History II is the real world empirical stories, neither Other nor subsumed by History I. History II has elements which do not, at present, mirror the conditions described as conducive to capitalism. The interaction between the allegedly analytical/universal (History I) and the located/lived (History II) produces a middle ground for exploration between particularism and universalism. Roy and Ong (2011) usefully propose a methodological and conceptual approach of ‘worlding’ as a lens through which to apply such locatedness in examining cities globally. For example, McFarlane et al. (2017) propose theorising diverse urbanisms within cities (intra-urban comparison) in conjunction with thinking comparatively and relationally across cities (inter-urban comparison) in order to reconceptualise urban politics more broadly. Urban scholars are thus actively seeking to more rigorously understand what it might mean to, for example, generalise without universalising, develop ‘mid-level’ theory (Roy, 2005) or study multiplicities across differing scales (McFarlane et al., 2017; Robinson, 2011; Schindler, 2014).

While this position can be found in urban studies, our reading is that its precise implications for an appropriate mode of urban studies are still being worked out. Scholars articulating this position simultaneously seek to displace the universal/exception dichotomy that has plagued urban studies while clearly arguing that theories developed in places have relevance elsewhere (Robinson, 2006, 2016b; Roy, 2009). We agree with many working in this vein that how exactly we acknowledge and respect the conceptual and theoretical offerings and limitations of this pathway (Robinson, 2016b), as well as precisely what aspects of theorisation can be made to travel (and to what extent) (see Lawhon et al., 2016), is a key subject for scholarly inquiry.

The southern urban critique is a tactical argument to decentre urban theory. Having done so, now we ought to work towards general urban theory based on a world of cities

In this mode of urban studies, theorisation that generalises and explains widely across empirical differences is both possible and useful; even when developed from place, theory can be un-located. The point of theorisation is to explain, and relate, across difference. The southern urban critique is necessary because southern cities are understudied, and northern theory needs to be provincialised (rather than assumed universally relevant). However, while empirical difference is fundamentally significant, it does not require ontological recalibration. While we do not find explicit articulations of such claims, there is evidence of attempts to navigate this murky water. Specifically, this involves questions as to whether we can now integrate southern cities into more unified modes (and methods) of urban studies and generalise relationally across sites and space, and what that means for the possibilities of urban theory.

Moves to develop a revitalised comparative urbanism offer a productive lens through which to examine ideas about future modes of urban studies. In these, we find authors grappling with what exactly is possible from such comparisons, including a thoughtful reflection on the possibilities of differing forms of universalisation (as modes of inquiry or conceptualisations, rather than universal causal explanations; see Hart (2018) for a deeper engagement with different modes of postcolonial comparison). For example, Leitner and Sheppard (2016: 4) note, in agreement with Robinson (2014), that ‘comparative urban research must be undertaken in ways that avoid reaffirming this universalism of the dominant as the implied standard of measure’. For us, the utility of this quotation is that it leaves open a question of the possibility of certain types of universalisation: surely, there is consensus amongst scholars of the southern urban critique that there are significant limitations to the ‘universalism of the dominant’. But it is not entirely clear as to whether this is a rejection of universalisms of all types (including methodological and theoretical modes of inquiry), let alone generalisation and explanation across a wide range of cities. One might here grapple with the implications of Chakrabarty’s History I and its utility: for while Chakrabarty is clear that History I is not directly universally applicable or explanatory, and is transformed through interactions with History II, we may read his argument as not opposed to the articulation of History I (e.g. Marx does have utility for understanding India, we just must examine how our understanding of capitalism changes through this case). Instead, any universal articulation of History I ought to be understood as a ‘place-holder’ (Chakrabarty, 2001: 70); History I is dynamic and changing as it is modified through empirical studies. For our analysis here, this means that universals are allowed to be modified through interactions with global south urban studies.

Significant for our analysis here, explicit reference to ‘deep postcolonial theory’ has long been widely absent from methodological reflections on urban comparison (e.g. Abu-Lughod, 1975; Robinson, 2016b). Strands of deep postcolonial theory are not necessarily incompatible with generalisation, and specifically the mode of comparison, but it does trouble the ease with which we can undertake this. Problematic comparisons have been widely accepted as foundational to the modern colonial rationality and are the source of narratives of southern exceptionalism or failure (Hart, 2018). More recently, we can see that urban comparison in practice still requires us to unpack our universalising assumptions. This concern is exemplified by recent debates on northern-derived conceptualisations of gentrification and its applicability and comparative purchase elsewhere (for example, see Lees’ (2012) articulation based on urban comparison). Ghertner (2015), for instance, argues that the gentrification concept derives from a set of assumptions and northern contexts that do not hold true globally. This debate is illustrative of a wider concern that comparison can include, but does not require, a careful unpacking of the assumptions that underpin theorisation. We argue that before we can understand the wider potential for generalisation, more emphasis is needed on the process of unlearning (e.g. identifying core assumptions and evaluating their relevance before generalising).

Here, we have focused on the pathways identified in the existing literature. While we find much use in the articulation of these three positions, we are concerned that these are largely conceived of as discrete positions with limited possibilities for reconciliation. Yet it is our contention that, before we can answer whether ‘theory’ may be, for example, southern, located, general or universal, we would be well served to ‘unbundle’ the notion of ‘theory’ into its many components (this is the subject of ongoing work) and specifically identify which component is the focus of critique. For whether one agrees that there is a universal empirical phenomenon of displacement, this is not the same as agreeing to the universality of causal explanations. Similarly, one might find universal applicability of concepts such as landscape and place, but find that what makes a place, and what constitutes place-based progressive change, differ across cities. Unbundling the components of critique may enable more rigorous dialogues about the process of theory-making and transcending polarising debates about what theory can do.