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Problem Spaces
How and Why Methodology Matters
Celia Lury
polity
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Copyright © Celia Lury 2021
The right of Celia Lury to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2021 by Polity Press
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank colleagues, friends and family near and far, including: Nerea Calvillo, Sophie Day, Michael Dieter, Sarah Doughty, Elena Esposito, Carolin Gerlitz, Christina Hughes, Eva Lash, Adam Lury, Giles Lury, Karen Lury, Henry Mainsah, Noortje Marres, Greg McInerny, Mike Michael, João Porto de Albuquerque, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Shirin Rai, Matt Spencer, David Stark, Martín Tironi, Nigel Thrift, Philipp Ulbrich, Matías Valderrama, Sylvia Walby, Naomi Waltham-Smith and Scott Wark. Special thanks go to Michael Castelle, who first introduced me to the idea of problem spaces; to Emma Uprichard, who kept me going; to Nate Tkacz and the three anonymous reviewers who read and commented on a draft of the book; and to Ana Gross, the co-author of Chapter 3. I would also like to thank Karina Jákupsdóttir and Jonathan Skerrett at Polity for their patience and support.
Research for this monograph was supported by an ESRC Professorial Fellowship: Order and Continuity: Methods for Change in a Topological Society, Ref No: 978-1444339598. I am grateful for this support.
Introduction: The Compulsion of Composition
Power is the compulsion of composition … The essence of power is the drive towards aesthetic worth for its own sake. All power is a derivative from this fact of composition attaining worth for itself. There is no other fact. Power and importance are aspects of this fact. It constitutes the drive of the universe. It is efficient cause, maintaining its power of survival. It is final cause, maintaining in the creature its appetition for creation.
Alfred North Whitehead (1968: 119)
Ann Kelly and Lynsey McGoey (2018) suggest that we are witnessing the emergence of ‘a new empire of truth’. Describing the significance of profound transformations in the ‘scaling, pace and symbolic power of fact-making’ for ‘the shifting relationships between knowledge, ignorance and power today’, they