Strategy

From Geography

Strategy

The term strategy appears in connection with ideas about practices in space in Michel de Certeaus book The Practice of Everyday Life (1984). De Certeau compares practices to trajectories (1984, p. 18), movements in space, but wants to avoid to regard those simply as a row of operations in time. He therefore makes a distinction between the concepts strategies and tactics (1984, p. 19) In his book (1984) Michel de Certeau defines strategies as follows: “I call a strategy the calculus of force-relationships which becomes possible when a subject of will and power can be isolated from an 'environment`”(De Certeau, 1984, p. 19). This implies that a strategy needs a place as a “basis” (ibid.), as an inside to create relations with an outside. De Certeau calls this place the “proper” and stresses that strategic models are a basis to diverse disciplines and can take the form of diverse institutions (enterprises to schools) and stimulate diverse forms of relationships (adversary to clientèles) (ibid.). This is how e.g. “strategic representations are offered to the public” (ibid., p. 23). The “other” can be distinguished that way as a “visible totality” and space wins over time. Strategies are thus sustained by power which is inherent in the proper (ibid., p. 20). This is not the case for tactics, which are the second kind of trajectories described by Certeau. Yet the “weaker” tactics can lead to success against strategies in diverse cases, in a clandestine way (Ibid., p. 14)

References

Dreyfus, H.L., Rabinow, P., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (The University of Chicago Press, 1983)

De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. London: University of California Press.

Contributors

Published by Meryl Burger (s0801704) Edited by Gijs Jansen , Edited by Janna Volpel (s3015041)JannaVolpel 12:35, 7 May 2012 (CEST)