Cities 44 (2015) 152–156

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Cities
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities

Depoliticizing urban discourse: How ‘‘we’’ write

Peter Marcuse ⇑
Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University in the City of New York, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The language in which policy discussions take place can have a real impact on the policies that result, a
Available online 21 July 2014 subliminal impact that resides in what the words imply. What is a ‘‘crisis’’ and what ‘‘normality’’ is to be
restored, who is the ‘‘we’’ that is often called on to act, who or what is ‘‘a city,’’ what are the goals of
Keywords: ‘‘resiliency, are questions obscured by the very fact that their meaning is so often taken for granted. This
Urban policy paper argues that many words become one-dimensional in their frequent usage, suppressing alternate
One-dimensionality meanings and implicitly endorsing the status quo. Interrogating the language used in policy analysis
Propaganda
should be a high priority in effective and socially aware public policy research.
Communication
Language
Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction effectively having important political implications supporting the

Standard urban research and writing have a problem. It is
widely present, but rarely confronted, in discussions of issues such
as power and policy. It uses a language replete with slippery words,
phrases and formulations taken at face value and unquestioned,
but in a language that, if examined, suppresses critical questions.
Such language is frequent in the mass media, but also appears in
otherwise respectable and even well-intentioned academic writing
and research. Typical of this language is the unexamined use of
terms such as ‘‘crisis,’’ ‘‘inequality,’’ ‘‘discrimination,’’ ‘‘productive,’’
‘‘growth,’’ ‘‘resilience,’’ or ‘‘new.’’ Some are discussed in some detail
below.
The concern here is not with the important set of issues George
Lakoff raises in his discussion of the uses of framing to set the
meaning of words, although that concept is also very relevant to
how language is used. The frame provided a given phrase is inten-
tional, if not conscious. I am here concerned rather with the use of
language that has an unintended and often subliminal meaning.
The examples cited below are all of unintended meanings, which
seem to me more harmful than if they were intended and overt.
Likewise the concern here is related to but different from
George Orwell’s attack on political speech. Orwell exposes bad
writing as such, and exposes political writing as consisting ‘‘largely
of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness,’’
stemming from the insincerity of the user. But the problem raised
here is when words and language is used in all sincerity,
innocently, but with implications not intended by its user but
legitimacy of the status quo.
Nor is the concern here with openly debated definitions of
terms where alternate definitions are out in the open and each
have clear political implications, such as ‘‘gentrification,’’ ‘‘partici-
pation,’’ sustainable,’’ or even some border-line terms, where
meanings are generally understood to be debatable even though
often thoughtlessly used, such as ‘‘democracy’’ or ‘‘fair’’. The con-
cern here is where the language has accepted and takes as obvious
and uncontroversial a one-dimensional term, which in fact harbors
suppressed critical dimensions, such as those discussed below.
And the concern here is not with abuses of language undertaken
deliberately to cover actions that if clearly named would jar many
people: ‘‘enhanced interrogation’’ for torture, ‘‘legacy assets’’ for
fraudulent mortgages, ‘‘pacification’’ for forcible repression, ‘‘eth-
nic pride’’ for racism, ‘‘not our kind’’ for black or poor. Such euphe-
misms are well-known results of public relations efforts intended
by their users to avoid criticism and preempt discussion; that
George Orwell exposed so eloquently.1 The concern here is rather
with the unintentional and usually thoughtless use of language that
carries a meaning or suppresses a meaning that would be critical if
explicitly presented.
Finally, It will be obvious that, at least in the use of phrases such
as ‘‘one-dimensional language,’’ that I am deeply indebted to my
father’s One-Dimensional Man, which in fact contains a deeper dis-
cussion of the politics of language than is attempted here. There is
in fact a broader discussion of the role of language as part of the
establishment of social order, a linguistic turn in the social
sciences, which is not pursued here.

⇑ Tel.: +1 20 1375 31140.

1
E-mail address: pm35@columbia.edu Orwell (1946).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2014.05.009
0264-2751/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 P. Marcuse / Cities 44 (2015) 152–156
A note then on who is being addressed in this ‘viewpoint’ paper:
The depoliticized words whose use is criticized here are in our
every-day vocabulary. They have become depoliticized not by a con-
spiracy of those whose interests they serve, but rather by their quiet
acceptance in established discourse. They cannot be avoided, but
their implications should be recognized and interrogated if their
implications do not accord with their users’ intent. Yet they are slip-
pery terms; they are mostly used as if their one apparently obvious
meaning were their only meaning, as if they had no other dimension
needing to be elucidated, yet often without their one-dimensional
meaning being intended, or even being recognized. Where the
one-dimensional meaning is intended, its users should take respon-
sibility for its policy implications. Where it is not intended, its users
should make it clear the way in which it is being used.
Thus, the concern here is not lack of clarity or disagreement as
to meaning, but the innocent, not conscious and not deliberate, use
of commonly accepted terms that are implicitly assumed to be
‘‘neutral,’’ not to have a political function, but that in reality are
complex and, if used without examination, implicitly suppress
alternate dimensions of meaning from what may be intended,
dimensions carrying with them alternate and critical understand-
ings of how the world works. Planning for ‘‘growth’’ assumes
growth is always good, and generally relates it to GNP or equiva-
lent. ‘‘The public interest’’ is used as if it is one single thing, not full
of contradictory interests. ‘‘Free elections’’ are so denominated if
residents can cast ballots unimpeded and have them fairly
counted. ‘‘Peace’’ exists if there is no war. It is the concealed, even
often subconscious, acceptance of terms in analyses that are
starkly conservative in their underpinnings and would be under-
stood as such if brought to light. It is a one-dimensional language
that closes off examination of critical questions as to what is really
going on in the world. Its political content is wiped out.
The problem with one-dimensional usage
Because the problem is precisely that the problem is so little
recognized within mainstream usage, it may be well to start with
some widely used terms,
We must learn. A piece by Paul Krugman, a Nobel-prize-
winning economist,2 illustrates how easy it is for a respected aca-
demic to use every-day terms without recognizing the slipperiness
of their usage.
Krugman’s headline is, ‘‘Why don’t we learn from financial cri-
ses?’’ He asks, about the current Indonesian currency crisis,
‘‘. . .should we be worried about Asia all over again?’’ The crises
show ‘‘low little we learned from that crisis 16 years ago. We didn’t
reform the financial industry. . .’’
But who ‘‘we?’’ Sometimes he’s quite clear: He cites the Time
magazine cover with Robert Rubin, then Treasury secretary, Larry
Summers, his deputy, under the caption ‘‘The Committee to Saves
the World.’’ Clearly it’s the 1%, saving ‘‘the World’’, that is, all the rest
of us included, from disaster. Krugman is quite clear on his analysis
about who’s responsible: he later, for instance, refers to the policy
makers, talking of the International Monetary Fund. But the lan-
guage he uses is slippery, and has subliminal meaning he doesn’t
intend. When he asks why don’t ‘‘we’’ learn from the last crisis,
who does he mean? Larry Summers and Robert Rubin are doing
quite well in this crisis also; who didn’t learn? The 1% or the 99%?
When Krugman writes: ‘‘. . .we’re actually doing much worse this
time around’’ he means the 99%; the 1% are doing quite well, looking
at the profits of the banks, the stock market, the growing share of the
national income the 1% are receiving. Using the ‘‘we’’ serves to
implicitly avoid the question of responsibility, who has benefited
2
Krugman (August 30, 2013).
153
and who lost, who made the decisions and who was subject to them.
‘‘We’’ didn’t reform the financial industry. ‘‘We didn’t’’? You and me?
No. The financial industry fought off the regulation. But the ‘‘we’’
makes it seem: ‘‘We’re’’ all in this together, one (1%) for all, and all
(99%) for one. Implicitly and I believe unintentionally, the language
used blames the victims as much as the perpetrators.
This failure to identify actors, to clarify who is doing what to
whom, to highlight the conflicts of interest that underlie policy,
ultimately to point out who’s on what side and what must politi-
cally be done, comes about just from the habit of using conven-
tional terms without thinking about them, to accept dominant
modes of speaking and describing without realizing the content
they convey in ordinary discourse.
The same is true when the subjects of actions are not identified:
‘‘the more austerity fails, the more bloodletting is demanded.’’ It’s a
policy that’s failing, not some particular persons nor groups who
have the power to make policy that are failing – and failing whom?
Not themselves. The 1% who make the policy are doing quite well
by it, by and large they are hardly ‘‘failing.’’ ‘‘Deregulation went full
speed ahead.’’ Krugman writes of the past. By itself? Or did it get
pushed, and if so, by whom, how? ‘‘. . . huge inflows of foreign
money [go] mainly to the private sector.’’ By themselves, like water
running downhill? Who’s sending it, who’s benefiting from the
flow, who suffering, are questions not deliberately concealed; they
just doesn’t rise to the surface, from the language.
Who ‘‘we’’ is, is perhaps the central political question in urban
policy. It ought not to be ignored.
When the slippery ‘‘we’’ is coupled with ‘‘learn,’’ the political
implications become even clearer. ‘‘Why don’t ‘we’ ‘learn’ from
financial crises?’’ ‘‘We’’ here might in fact mean everybody,
although that’s actually not what Krugman means. But, whoever
it is, is learning what’s required? If everyone accepted Krugman’s
perceptive analysis of the crisis, would all of us be better off? Isn’t
it rather that some, the 1%, understand very well, and mold the
response to their own interests, and the rest, the 99%, even if they
understood (and many certainly do, including most of Krugman’s
readers, but are powerless to put their understanding into prac-
tice? Using the language of learning to describe the problem
implicitly makes it one not of political conflict and conflict of inter-
ests, but one of education. Well, Krugman is a teacher; if your tool
is a hammer, every problem is a nail; if your tool is teaching, every
problem is one of learning. Krugman certainly knows better, but
the language doesn’t reveal that.
This is not just stylistic nit-picking. It is language that depoliti-
cizes what goes on in the world; it has to do with a political world-
view. On the one side, one may see policy differences and conflicts
of interest as parts of a learning process, in which all citizens par-
ticipate in an effort to achieve a just result for all – a process where
there is a real and all-inclusive ‘‘we.’’ Or one may see the world, or
at least that is made up of different nations different classes, differ-
ent genders, different interests, as one in which conflicts of interest
are pervasive, in which power is widely sought, unevenly gained,
constantly exercised by and on behalf of specific groups and indi-
viduals and at the expense of other specific groups of individuals.
To the extent that language plays a role, consciously or not, the
‘‘we’’-ing and references to actor-less actions implicitly supports
the first world view, rather than the second. And that necessarily
has implications for political thinking and action. In this case, it’s
likely unintended, but unclear.
For two other terms is wide = spread current use:
Crisis, in its conventional usage means something unusual, an
exception, a deviation from what is normal. But when used in the
context of ‘‘the present economic crisis’’ or similar, it prejudices
the discussion from the outset. As pointed out in the Premise of this
issue, that is exactly the question that needs to be addressed; the
answer sold may not already be implicit in the word. Is what is
154 P. Marcuse / Cities 44 (2015) 152–156
happening something unusual, a deviation from the normal, and if so
how, to what extent, of what nature? Or is it an inherent part of a his-
torical system that produces as a matter of course the ills we associ-
ate with today’s events.
Avoiding that question, or tacitly accepting the answer implicit
in the word used, is not a matter of academic nicety; it has direct
political implications. If it is a crisis, in that word’s conventional
meaning, look for what set it off, and fix it; then all will be all right
again. A big of regulation here, a redirection of a subsidy or a tax
there, some injection of confidence through fiscal policy or public
rhetoric, and we’re back to normal. Perhaps in the recovery unem-
ployment remains high, wages low, but by definition crises are
temporary, things will get better.
Resilient. Resiliency is a good thing; public policy needs to rein-
force it. The implication is that the system – or the shoreline, per-
haps, if it is the resiliency after a hurricane or flooding that is in
question – should bounce back to where it was. We have confer-
ences on resiliency, planning for resiliency, assessments of resil-
iency, all in good faith – but that the term implies restoration of
the status quo ante to be the goal is not raised by the term, which
simply bypasses the question. Yet it is perhaps exactly the situa-
tion prior to the disaster that provoked the desire for resiliency
that must be addressed. Disasters may have multiple causes and
may be hard to predict, but accepting them at the outset as likely
to take place ignores the question, which ought to be the initial and
primary one: need the disaster occur in the first place? Accepting
‘‘resiliency’’ as defining the goal undermines sound policy at the
outset. Escape routes are planned, (the case of hurricane Sandy is
much discussed in the United States today), building codes
amended, houses moved inland or placed on pillars, waters
dredged or sand piped in, employees trained. With the proper fixes,
we can be resilient, and life will go on as before. The very word
‘‘resiliency’’, if unquestioned, carries with it clear policy baggage.
Some further similarly slippery and one-dimensional terms, like
‘‘city,’’ ‘‘we,’’ ‘‘the economy’’ are discussed below, but the problem
of language needs to be seen in a theoretical context.
Theory
The One-Dimensional Language of standard analysis is created
and embellished through a variety of techniques:
 The tyranny of facts: giving exclusive consideration to the
‘‘facts,’’ to hard data, priority for the quantifiable that can be
empirically demonstrated claiming objectivity for the findings
and presentations of research.
 Homogenization of entities: cancelling out the internal varia-
tions and diversities that are contained with a single term, such
as city or public.
 The euphemization of value-laden terms, giving terms needing
critical examination names that lend what is actually being
described a positive valence, words such as ‘‘creative,’’
‘‘production’’.
 The anonymization of actors, or their evaporation, presenting
developments as if they had a life of their own, arriving without
specific human agency, such as ‘‘ghettoization’’, ‘‘speculation
increased, ‘‘the jobs being created are minimum wage jobs;’’
‘‘climate warming.’’ The grammatical form favored for this pur-
pose is the passive voice: ‘‘blacks were segregated,’’ ‘‘civilians
were killed.’’
 Creating mythic entities, anthropomorphizing institutions and
processes and concepts (Thor, Vulcan, Neptune, without the
names), using metaphors that imagine cities, statistics, spaces,
as ‘‘growing,’’ ‘‘declining,’’ or ‘‘spreading,’’ as if they were
organic, living entities.
 Harmonization, the denial of conflict, the unspoken assumption
of unity of interests, of a single ultimate public interest, of an
achievable harmony of interests and consensus among conflict-
ing forces, groups, concerns, around concepts such as ‘‘sustain-
able,’’ ‘‘healthy market,’’ ‘‘mobility,’’ ‘‘choice.’’
 Co-opting or narrowing the meaning of words or concepts that
might provoke critical thoughts, such as ‘‘’’surplus’’ – we have a
deficit, not a surplus – ‘‘fair,’’ ‘‘social use,’’ ‘‘grass roots.’’ Justice,
as in ‘‘Just City,’’ or ‘‘Justice for Janitors,’’ is in such danger, if it is
not linked to the necessary characteristics of the social order,
which is critically necessary for its realization.
 The functionalization of nouns: operationalism – to make the
concept synonymous with the corresponding set of operations3
– recurs in the linguistic tendency ‘‘to consider the names of
things as being indicative at the same time of their manner of
functioning: the policeman, is s the enforcer of law and order,
not a man with a job,3 and the names of properties and processes
as symbolical of the apparatus used to detect or produce them.’’4
 Misplaced concreteness, opposed to or merely neglecting theo-
retical understanding: an overwhelming concreteness: voting as
going to the polls, as opposed to implementing democracy. ‘‘The
‘‘thing identified with its function’’ is more real than the thing
distinguished from its function: the beach as waterfront recre-
ation, as opposed to a form of shore-line.4
One-dimensional language has a clear political impact. It sup-
ports the status quo, implicitly suggesting that, if there are difficul-
ties, they are subject to correction within existing structures and
with existing means. One-dimensional language conceals its sub-
servience to the existing relationships of power and privilege,
and imperialistically occupies the space of thought and discourse,
and in the long run action, avoiding any opening to critical thought
or analysis, or ultimately to social change. Such language simply
ignores the possibility of any critical understanding based on other
meanings. Calling it a ‘‘war on poverty’’ has a quite different impli-
cation for necessary action than calling it a ‘‘war on oppression.’’5
Everyday examples
Many widely-used current examples of such depoliticized lan-
guage; some frequently found ones include:
Is it ‘‘cities’’ that have a crisis? Is it ‘‘cities’’ that compete? Is it
‘‘cities’’ that have policies? It is certainly possible to ask such ques-
tions in a meaningful way, if the sense in which the word ‘‘cities’’ is
used is clear. ‘‘Cities’’ have a spatial meaning, they are places where
things are done, they have legal definitions, quantitative and qual-
itative characteristics. But a city in this sense is not an actor; a city
does not compete, pass legislation, shelter the homeless – city gov-
ernments do, more exactly the power structures dominating city
governments and their economic activities, do these things.6 Writ-
ing about cities as if they were single organic entities doing things
depoliticizes the understanding of who is doing what to whom in
cities.
It is certainly possible to see the city as a specific historically
constituted system of social, economic, and political relationships,
embodied in a particular type of physical built environment.
3
This is technological reasoning, which tends ‘‘to identify things and their
functions.’’ Marcuse, 1972, pp. 86–87.
4
‘‘. . .the linguistic expression of this identification (in the functional noun, and in
the many forms of syntactical abridgment) creates a basic vocabulary and syntax
which stand in the way of differentiation, separation, and distinction. This language,
which constantly imposes images, militates against the development and expression
of concepts. In its immediacy and directness.’’ Marcuse, 1972, p. 94.
5
The Nation, as usual, get it right: Editorial (February 11, 2013).
6
I have made this argument in a prior piece: Marcuse (2005).
 P. Marcuse / Cities 44 (2015) 152–156
Critical writers, such as Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey, some-
times use it in this sense. Both, however, alternate that use with
the term ‘‘urban,’’ sometimes deliberately rejecting ‘‘city’’ because
it is so frequently used in a more limited sense. ‘‘Urban’’ avoids the
danger of the view of ‘‘the city’’ anthropomorphically. The mythi-
cally-inclined yet thoughtful Greeks had no god of the cities;
Athena might plausibly be seen as goddess of the urban.
Is the mortgage foreclosure problem one because of troubled
assets? But assets don’t have feelings. Assets are troubled because
people, specific people, treat their owners in specific ways, which
produce troubles.
Is the housing market healthy? The ‘‘housing market’’ is not an
organism that is healthy or sick; it is a place, and institution, in
which transactions occur, and the reference can be to the number
of transactions in it, their speed, the amounts involved, the profits
involved, and whether trends lines for any of these are rising or
falling. Using the term effectively blots out all such questions,
which in fact are crucial for policy purposes.
Is the housing market healthy? The opening paragraph of an
article by a respected financial columnist is typical in its language:
‘‘A funny thing is happening to the United States housing
market. It is getting better at an accelerating rate.’’7
The evidence for the statement is simple ‘‘House prices are ris-
ing. . .’’ The equation of housing prices rising with a ‘‘better’’ hous-
ing market is deemed not needing of justification; countless other
reports speak of the ‘‘health of the housing market’’ using a similar
definition. The language completely elides the question of better
for whom, healthy for whom. It collaborates in purveying the equa-
tion of improvement with rising prices, leaving no room to ques-
tion for whom rising prices are a benefit and who pays. Using
‘‘healthy’’ without more conceals inequities and depoliticizes the
issue.
Does the financial sector include producer services? Meant is
that finance employment includes not only stock brokers and mer-
ger specialists, but also accountants, lawyers, technical analysts,
computer managers. Descriptively, it is a useful phrase. The phrase,
however, elides the difference between the production of goods,
commodity production, and the activities that are ancillary to them
and ultimately rely on their existence to have value. But perhaps
the majority of economists would argue, as Paul Samuelson always
did, that the speculators, merger and acquisition specialists, indeed
stock brokers generally, are also productive, perform a productive
function in regulating the flow of funds and investment levels in
the economy as a whole. The implication of the language becomes
clear when the definition of productive is called into question and
is asked from an openly political and social rather than economic
perspective.
Is the financial sector productive? Of course being productive is
a good thing; everyone should be a maker, not a taker. But all kinds
of things can be produced, and all are not equally ‘‘good.’’ Defining
much of the financial sector as including producer services’’ gives
that work a positive cast it might not have it if were termed ‘‘finan-
cial-market-serving.’’ It conceals its political content.
Do we need to declare war on poverty? (Never mind ‘‘we.’’)
Certainly poverty is a bad thing, and should be eliminated. But is
it a ‘‘thing’’ or is it a relationship? Aren’t some people poor because
it is to other people’s interests that they be poor? Shouldn’t the tar-
get of the war on poverty be those responsible for it? Attacking
‘‘poverty’’ obscures the very real conflicts among very real actors
responsible for poverty. There is, today, enough to go around. To
obscure that fact, as all of the discussion of austerity does today,
7 10
Norris (January 25, 2013).
155
is to conceal the basic realities of inequality and exploitation. It
depoliticizes the issue.
Is inequality then the problem? It can certainly be an indicator
of the problem if the measure is income or wealth, and those at
the bottom of the ladder are in poverty, have less than they need.
But all people are not equal in physical strength, in skill, in musical
ability, in temperament, etc. Speaking about inequality without
making it clear what the measure is conceals the fact that inequal-
ity in financial resources is the function of how actors in the eco-
nomic, political, and social arena relate to each other, how the
system that specific actors have created works. The equality that
is troublesome is ultimately the inequality of power, the failure
to achieve equal weight in the social decision-making processes
of democracy. Inequality in the distribution of goods and services
might be quite acceptable, if democratically agreed upon and
reflecting differences of needs, of abilities, or other agreed-upon
factors, agreed-upon in the absence of the exercise of power. After
at first perhaps usefully calling attention to a problem by writing of
‘‘inequality,’’ leaving it with that term unexamined effectively
depoliticizes the issue.
Cities must compete in the new global order in order to survive.
But ‘‘cities’’ are made up of a wide variety of discordant and con-
flicting interests, some of which are competitive with similar inter-
ests in other cities, while others are not. Disentangling them is
indeed one of the main challenges to urban research and analysis.
And their relationship to the global order may or may not be new;
most likely those cities harboring businesses with broad interna-
tional connections were home to such businesses for many dec-
ades, and working globally for them is nothing new. A language
that ignores these facts and treats cities as organic entities implies
a unity of interests, conceals who it is that ‘‘grows’’ and who does
not when ‘‘the city’’ grows, and has the political effect of legitimat-
ing expenditures on behalf of a single interest group as inevitably a
benefit to all others in the city.8 The term ‘‘urban’’ has much the
same problem, although here there has been much more questioning
of the concept and its uses.
Does gentrification produce neighborhood vitality? The multiple
uses of the term ‘‘gentrification’’ have been discussed elsewhere,9
and their different implications need constant attention. ‘‘Vitality,’’
as applied to neighborhoods, has been used with much less attention
to its alternate meanings, even where good detailed descriptions are
presented, that assume one meaning or another. A street with side-
walk cafes, bistros, mom and pop stores, book shops, jazz locales, can
be vital for one group, one with community gardens and play-
grounds and open street hydrants in hot weather for another, a sub-
urban neighborhood with residents talking across back fences to
each other another, a senior housing complex with extensive
planned activities for the elderly with quite another. Seeking ‘‘vital-
ity,’’ without specifying for whom, is not very helpful.
We might in fact speak of the ‘‘gentrification of language,’’ with
the language of gentrification itself as an example10: a language
that has itself been gentrified, with its original critical meanings dis-
placed into conventional and one-dimensional use, displacing its
critical content into issues of precise measurement and quantifica-
tion, rates of change, variations in comparative studies, divorcing
the discussion from the consequences for those displaced and
harmed by the processes, from discussion of winners and losers,
from consideration of alternative ways of community development.
What makes this process of displacement in language so insidious,
however, is that it is so often unconscious. If its suppressed mean-
ings were brought to light, it might be welcomed by some, rejected
8
I took an early swipe at the problem in Marcuse (2005).
9
See the excellent discussion in Slater (2011).
Note the term ‘‘eviction’’ in Slater (2006).
156 P. Marcuse / Cities 44 (2015) 152–156
by others; its effect without clear context and clarified meaning is
the same regardless.
Conclusions
To summarize: the concern with language used in urban policy
and power discussions is not so much with the repression of alter-
native content, but with the suppression of their very germination.
One-dimensional language does not repress the publication of
existing knowledge – an equally critical issue. It is not that the
media, academic interest, peer reviewers, prevent the publication
of existing information about the non-market forms of allocating
land to various uses and users in socialist economies. It is rather
that the very idea that land can be allocated to its best uses with-
out a market never appears; in the dominant discourse, the idea is
simply not present, not discussed. It can be tolerated at the fringes,
but remains at the fringes. It simply does not enter the universe of
everyday political or academic or research discourse. That is a dif-
ferent process from the repression of knowledge. If professional
journals, institutions funding research, universities, consistently
reject papers or courses or projects that exclude alternate forms
of land allocation, we may speak of repression; authoritarian
regimes may well act in this way explicitly, consciously, and in
non- = authoritarian regimes there will often be exceptions. But
one-dimensional language suppresses even the awareness of such
ideas. Papers are simply not written, grants not applied for, panels
not organized at conferences, exploring non-market ways of han-
dling land use, seeing their possibilities as alternatives to the pre-
vailing arrangements rather than simply modifications of them, are
simply not presented. Alternative approaches are not repressed by
one-dimensional language; they simply are not generated any-
where near the arena of policy discourse or power.
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