Papers by Dragos Simandan
Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 2024
In this paper, we critically analyze the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting not only... more In this paper, we critically analyze the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting not only the breadth of knowledge geographers have already contributed to this assessment, but also the surprisingly limited critique within geography, social sciences and the broadly defined “Academic Left” of the authoritarian dimension of the public health policies of 2020 onwards. We conclude with a number of research questions for the aftermath of the pandemic, with the hope that they will help spur the growth of a new wave of anti-authoritarian Leftist geographical thinking that reaffirms the centrality of human rights and civil liberties to making the world a better place.
Key words: COVID-19; authoritarianism; public health; Academic Left; pandemic response.
HOW TO CITE: Simandan, D., Rinner, C., Capurri, V., (2024). The academic left, human geography, and the rise of authoritarianism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, vol. 106, issue 2, pp. 175-195, https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2023.2168560.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2022
Even though Pietraszewski acknowledges the tentative nature of the theory and the multiple lines ... more Even though Pietraszewski acknowledges the tentative nature of the theory and the multiple lines of adjacent research needed to flesh it out, he insists that the finite set of primitives he identified is necessary and sufficient for defining social groups in the context of conflict. In this commentary I expose three interrelated conundrums that cast doubt on this simplistic presumption.
How to reference: Simandan, D. (2022). Social groups and the computational conundrums of delays, proximity, and loyalty. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45, E121, https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X21001205.
Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 2022
Our research seeks to answer whether immigrants see the act of relocating to a different country ... more Our research seeks to answer whether immigrants see the act of relocating to a different country and the place-based intercultural encounters associated with this migration as being conducive to wisdom. The study is interested in qualitatively analysing the spatial constitution of wisdom and the perceptions of wisdom that immigrants possess. This situated approach looks at wisdom in relation to narrativity, subjectivity, and positionality, as opposed to the now-dominant psychological view of wisdom as a quantifiable phenomenon that can be measured on a positivist scale. Both inter-country migration and living amongst other ethnicities in migrant cities are spatial processes of relevance to our attempt to think geographically about how people become wiser. We investigate empirically and develop the foregoing themes by drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with Romanian immigrants in Ontario, Canada, between 2014 and 2018.
How to cite: Kutor, S.K., Raileanu, A. and Simandan, D., 2022. Thinking geographically about how people become wiser: an analysis of the spatial dislocations and intercultural encounters of international migrants, Social Sciences & Humanities Open. 6(1): 100288, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2022.100288
SSM-Population Health, 2021
Scholars in the field of population health need to be on the constant lookout for the danger that... more Scholars in the field of population health need to be on the constant lookout for the danger that their tacit ideological commitments translate into systematic biases in how they interpret their empirical results. This contribution illustrates this problematic by critically interrogating a set of concepts such as tradition, trust, social capital, community, or gender, that are routinely used in population health research even though they carry a barely acknowledged political and ideological load. Alongside this wider deconstruction of loaded concepts, I engage critically but constructively with Lindström et al.'s paper "Social capital, the miniaturization of community, traditionalism and mortality: A population-based prospective cohort study in southern Sweden" to evaluate the extent to which it fits with other empirical findings in the extant literature. Taking as a point of departure the intriguing finding that social capital predicts cardiovascular and all-cause mortality only for men, but not for women, I argue that future research on the nexus of social capital, health, and mortality needs to frame gender not only as a demographic and statistical variable, but also as an ontological conundrum and as an epistemological sensibility.
DOI (Open Access): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100971
Migration Studies, 2021
Drawing on semi-structured in-depth interviews with Romanian immigrants in Ontario, Canada, condu... more Drawing on semi-structured in-depth interviews with Romanian immigrants in Ontario, Canada, conducted between 2014 and 2018, this paper explores how the experiences acquired by the Romanian immigrants through migration and multicultural intercourse facilitate the development of personal wisdom. We show how our research participants perceived these geographical processes of migration and place-based multi-ethnic co-habitation to account for their growing wiser than their earlier selves. Specifically, we organize the description of these perceptions into three interrelated themes: (1) changes in perspective, (2) the learning of new things, and (3) the role of place in fostering wisdom. Against this background, the paper also highlights the boundary conditions within which these processes may or may not foster the development of wisdom, acknowledging that not all migratory and multicultural experiences lead to prosocial and adaptive outcomes. Our discussion of these boundary conditions with the research participants coalesced into five recurrent themes: (1) adaptation to the new environment and social system, (2) the role of the host environment as a boundary condition, (3) the problem of unmet expectations, (4) the magnitude of the cultural shocks, and (5) the language barrier. Bearing the complex politics of these boundary conditions in mind, we argue that the experience of international migration and subsequent cross-cultural interaction can be usefully understood as a "fertile ground" for the flourishing of personal wisdom, which itself can act as an individual and collective resource for cohabitation in multicultural settings.
How to cite: Kutor, S.K., Raileanu, A., Simandan, D., 2021. International migration, cross-cultural interaction, and the development of personal wisdom. Migration Studies, volume 9, issue 3, pp. 490-513, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnz049
Dialogues in Human Geography, 2019
The ‘four epistemic gaps’ interpretation of positionality and situated knowledges developed in th... more The ‘four epistemic gaps’ interpretation of positionality and situated knowledges developed in the anchor article goes significantly beyond Donna Haraway’s original formulation of the thesis of situated knowledges. It does so by organizing the study of the processes that provincialize and politicize perception and cognition alongside a logical sequence of epistemic gaps that shape the quantity and content of information accessible to different subjectivities. In this contribution, I address four sets of productive tensions and constructive criticisms sparked by the anchor article and highlight how they can help fulfill the promise of a generative research program that engages multiple other voices.
Simandan, D., (2019). “Beyond Haraway? Addressing constructive criticisms to the ‘four epistemic gaps’ interpretation of positionality and situated knowledges” Dialogues in Human Geography [2017 impact factor 10.214, rank 1/84 Geography], vol. 9(2), pp. 166-170, https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820619850272 .
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 2019
The contribution by De Dreu and Gross (2019) oversimplifies the complexity of the topic. I provid... more The contribution by De Dreu and Gross (2019) oversimplifies the complexity of the topic. I provide counterarguments that undermine the two sweeping contentions on which the paper's argument depends and I argue that asymmetric conflict is best understood at the finer grained level of studying the sequences of strikes and counter-strikes the rival actors have in store for one another. How to cite: Simandan D (2019) "Levels of analysis and problems of evidential support in the study of asymmetric conflict". Behavioral and Brain Sciences [citation impact 17.194; rank 4/267 Neurosciences, 1/53 Behavioral Sciences], vol. 42, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X19000682
Progress in Human Geography , 2020
Surprises are refuted expectations and therefore an inevitable concomitant of errors of anticipat... more Surprises are refuted expectations and therefore an inevitable concomitant of errors of anticipating the future. This paper argues that the timing is just right for a spatial account of surprise, or rather, for a geography of personal and social change that deploys the trope of surprise to help explain how and why change happens. Whether we are surprised by what transpires in our surroundings or we are surprising ourselves by leaping forward in impetuous deeds of reinventing who we are, the common denominator of these processes of becoming is that they produce geographical space and are produced by it. To cite this paper: Simandan, D., 2020. Being surprised and surprising ourselves: a geography of personal and social change. Progress in Human Geography, 44(1), pp. 99-118. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132518810431
Geoforum, 2019
Individual and collective actors are typically engaged in several simultaneous co-evolutionary ma... more Individual and collective actors are typically engaged in several simultaneous co-evolutionary matching dynamics with their opponents, and this process creates a relentlessly evolving political-economic landscape. When an actor makes a move that is detrimental to another actor, the latter is likely to strike back with a countermove that nullifies the initial threat, or compensates for it. To understand the time-geography created by these move-countermove dynamics, the paper (a) delineates criteria for classifying competitive counterforces, (b) provides a detailed typology of delays encountered in competitive landscapes, and (c) illustrates the relevance of this research to economic and political geographies.
How to cite: Simandan D (2019) “Competition, delays, and coevolution in markets and politics”, Geoforum , vol. 98, pp. 15-24, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.09.014
Dialogues in Human Geography, 2019
Feminist and queer epistemologies have been influential throughout the social sciences by means o... more Feminist and queer epistemologies have been influential throughout the social sciences by means of the development of a set of interrelated approaches involving positionality, partiality, reflexivity, intersectionality, and the highly politicized thesis of situated knowledge. This article aims to operationalize these approaches by introducing an anti-humanist, politically attuned, and historically contextualized framework, which postulates that one’s knowledge is inevitably incomplete and situated because information about the world always reaches one through a channel that is constituted by four epistemic gaps: (1) ‘possible worlds versus realized world’, (2) ‘realized world versus witnessed situation’, (3) ‘witnessed situation versus remembered situation’, and (4) ‘remembered situation versus confessed situation’.
Simandan D (2019) “Revisiting positionality and the thesis of situated knowledge” Dialogues in Human Geography [2017 impact factor 10.214, rank 1/84 Geography], vol. 9(2), pp. 129-149, https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820619850013
Time & Society, 2019
Actors in competitive environments are bound to decide and act under conditions of uncertainty be... more Actors in competitive environments are bound to decide and act under conditions of uncertainty because they rarely have accurate foreknowledge of how their opponents will respond and when they will respond. Just as a competitor makes a move to improve their standing on a given variable relative to a target competitor, she should expect the latter to counteract with an iterative lagged asymmetric response, that is, with a sequence of countermoves (iteration) that is very different in kind from its trigger (asymmetry) and that will be launched at some unknown point in the future (time lag). The paper explicates the broad relevance of the newly proposed concept of " iterative lagged asymmetric responses " to the social study of temporality and to fields as diverse as intelligence and counterintelligence studies, strategic management, futures studies, military theory, and long-range planning. By bringing out in the foreground and substantiating the observation that competitive environments place a strategic premium on surprise, the concept of iterative lagged asymmetric responses makes a contribution to the never-ending and many-pronged debate about the extent to which the future can be predicted.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X17752652
Journal of Futures Studies, 2018
This article provides an analysis of the problematic of foresight in traditional Chinese thought,... more This article provides an analysis of the problematic of foresight in traditional Chinese thought, articulating it with current developments in the epistemology of futures studies, planning theory, and strategic management. It is argued that in Chinese thought the answer to the question " Can the future be predicted? " depends on the forecasting horizon: whereas the immediate future can be sensed and taken advantage of by immersing oneself in the evolving situation, the remote future is fundamentally unpredictable. These dual answers are entrenched in discussions of what constitutes wisdom, opening up productive spaces of encounter between the problematic of foresight and the problematic of wisdom. https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.2018.22(3).00A35
Social Science & Medicine, 2018
The task of studying the impact of social class on physical and mental health involves, among oth... more The task of studying the impact of social class on physical and mental health involves, among other things, the use of a conceptual toolbox that defines what social class is, establishes how to measure it, and sets criteria that help distinguish it from closely related concepts. One field that has recently witnessed a wealth of theoretical and conceptual research on social class is psychology, but geographers' and sociologists' attitude of diffidence toward this " positivistic " discipline has prevented them from taking advantage of this body of scholarship. This paper aims to highlight some of the most important developments in the psychological study of social class and social mobility that speak to the long-standing concerns of health geographers and sociologists with how social position, perceptions, social comparisons, and class-based identities impact health and well-being.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.11.037
Urban Geography, 2018
This intervention contributes to recent work in urban geography that integrates the conceptual fr... more This intervention contributes to recent work in urban geography that integrates the conceptual frameworks of assemblages and actor-network theory by highlighting two additional directions that require a more rigorous and detailed theorization. The first direction concerns the relationship between contingency and necessity in urban assemblages and actor-networks and this paper delineates four specific propositions as a starting point for further reflection. The second direction suggests that urban assemblages and actor-networks require a more explicit vocabulary for thinking about competition and cooperation within and between cities. To this end, the paper introduces a new concept – delayed asymmetric counterforces – that can foster a better understanding of competition-induced urban change and destabilization. The novel concept is developed in conjunction with a typology of delays in competitive urban dynamics, which helps illuminate how delayed asymmetric counterforces are both a cause and an effect of the complexity inherent in the urban realm.
Area, 2017
Demonic geography is an approach to practicing human geography that operates from the premise tha... more Demonic geography is an approach to practicing human geography that operates from the premise that there are no such immaterial entities as 'souls', 'spirits', 'minds', integrated, stable 'selves', or conscious 'free will'. This paper elaborates the theoretical framework of demonic geography by spelling out how it is different from non-representational theory and by articulating it with recent developments in experimental psychology, neuroscience, and the philosophy of mind. Counterintuitively, the paper shows that the deflationary, materialistic ontology of human nature espoused by demonic geography need not lead to meaninglessness, unhappiness, or the collapse of moral behaviour. Instead, subscribing to demonic geography opens up new ways to find meaning, to pursue happiness, and to live the good life.
Journal of Biosocial Science, 2017
A discussion of the wise stance in biomedical research as an epistemological attitude that system... more A discussion of the wise stance in biomedical research as an epistemological attitude that systematically combines multiple perspectives, coupled with a reflection on the path-dependent politics of biomedical knowledge production.
Health & Place
An analysis of how the integrated model of allostasis enables a more rigorous and detailed unders... more An analysis of how the integrated model of allostasis enables a more rigorous and detailed understanding of the mechanisms through which economic exploitation and social exclusion negatively affect well-being and health.
Journal of Biosocial Science, 2017
An analysis of the role of neoliberalism, contempt, and allostatic load in the social dynamics of... more An analysis of the role of neoliberalism, contempt, and allostatic load in the social dynamics of tuberculosis.
This paper introduces several theoretical tools for the analysis of the geographies of institutio... more This paper introduces several theoretical tools for the analysis of the geographies of institutional transformation and inter-institutional competition under neoliberalism, through the case study of a peripheral trade union from Western Romania to which the author has had a privileged epistemic access. The first part of the paper discusses the truth-effects arising of this access, the second summarises the theoretical background of the research by means of the metaphor of 'polymorphous chorologies', the third excavates the history of the trade union through a five-fold grid of concern (including money and material resources, emotions, political networking, scale performance, and know-how), and the final, concluding part, theorises the failure of this trade union, and pleads for a form of active reflexivity in the practice of research.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2012
This is an introduction to a debate consisting of three articles and a reply, published in 2012 i... more This is an introduction to a debate consisting of three articles and a reply, published in 2012 in The International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (volume 36, issue 1).
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Papers by Dragos Simandan
Key words: COVID-19; authoritarianism; public health; Academic Left; pandemic response.
HOW TO CITE: Simandan, D., Rinner, C., Capurri, V., (2024). The academic left, human geography, and the rise of authoritarianism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, vol. 106, issue 2, pp. 175-195, https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2023.2168560.
How to reference: Simandan, D. (2022). Social groups and the computational conundrums of delays, proximity, and loyalty. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45, E121, https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X21001205.
How to cite: Kutor, S.K., Raileanu, A. and Simandan, D., 2022. Thinking geographically about how people become wiser: an analysis of the spatial dislocations and intercultural encounters of international migrants, Social Sciences & Humanities Open. 6(1): 100288, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2022.100288
DOI (Open Access): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100971
How to cite: Kutor, S.K., Raileanu, A., Simandan, D., 2021. International migration, cross-cultural interaction, and the development of personal wisdom. Migration Studies, volume 9, issue 3, pp. 490-513, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnz049
Simandan, D., (2019). “Beyond Haraway? Addressing constructive criticisms to the ‘four epistemic gaps’ interpretation of positionality and situated knowledges” Dialogues in Human Geography [2017 impact factor 10.214, rank 1/84 Geography], vol. 9(2), pp. 166-170, https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820619850272 .
How to cite: Simandan D (2019) “Competition, delays, and coevolution in markets and politics”, Geoforum , vol. 98, pp. 15-24, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.09.014
Simandan D (2019) “Revisiting positionality and the thesis of situated knowledge” Dialogues in Human Geography [2017 impact factor 10.214, rank 1/84 Geography], vol. 9(2), pp. 129-149, https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820619850013
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X17752652
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.11.037
Key words: COVID-19; authoritarianism; public health; Academic Left; pandemic response.
HOW TO CITE: Simandan, D., Rinner, C., Capurri, V., (2024). The academic left, human geography, and the rise of authoritarianism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, vol. 106, issue 2, pp. 175-195, https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2023.2168560.
How to reference: Simandan, D. (2022). Social groups and the computational conundrums of delays, proximity, and loyalty. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45, E121, https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X21001205.
How to cite: Kutor, S.K., Raileanu, A. and Simandan, D., 2022. Thinking geographically about how people become wiser: an analysis of the spatial dislocations and intercultural encounters of international migrants, Social Sciences & Humanities Open. 6(1): 100288, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2022.100288
DOI (Open Access): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100971
How to cite: Kutor, S.K., Raileanu, A., Simandan, D., 2021. International migration, cross-cultural interaction, and the development of personal wisdom. Migration Studies, volume 9, issue 3, pp. 490-513, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnz049
Simandan, D., (2019). “Beyond Haraway? Addressing constructive criticisms to the ‘four epistemic gaps’ interpretation of positionality and situated knowledges” Dialogues in Human Geography [2017 impact factor 10.214, rank 1/84 Geography], vol. 9(2), pp. 166-170, https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820619850272 .
How to cite: Simandan D (2019) “Competition, delays, and coevolution in markets and politics”, Geoforum , vol. 98, pp. 15-24, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.09.014
Simandan D (2019) “Revisiting positionality and the thesis of situated knowledge” Dialogues in Human Geography [2017 impact factor 10.214, rank 1/84 Geography], vol. 9(2), pp. 129-149, https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820619850013
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X17752652
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.11.037
The first part of the volume - "Old Ways" - addresses the question whether geography as we know it is worth keeping. The first chapter argues that traditional scientific disciplines are not as bad as we sometimes like to think they are. This argument is then deployed in the second chapter to investigate whether geography specifically is worth keeping. The chapter concludes that even if we admit a Cinderella status for geography among the disciplines, this aspect brings some secondary benefits out of which a rejuvenated geography can emerge. The second part of the book – "New Ways" – discusses some lines of flight towards this rejuvenated geography. Given the editorial constraints, I selected three possible new ways on which I have started to work lately. Thus, chapter three explores the stakes of an engagement between geography and metaphysics in the analytic tradition, chapter four makes some suggestions about how to understand the relativity of norms in geographical practice, and chapter five brings together two case studies that help explain why we need to pay sustained attention to the vicious logic of epistemic neglect.
The book aims to present a critical history of the process of modernisation in the margins of Europe, more specifically in Romania and, to a lesser extent, in Norway. By modernisation I mean the assemblage of theories and practices produced by the European Enlightenment and concerned with how to develop rather primitive cultures into civilized cultures (industrialised, urbanised, educated). This broad definition includes neoliberalism and communism as particular ways in which modernisation can proceed. Throughout the book, I analyse modernity in its various guises: Ceausescu's communist regime, Norway's welfare capitalism, or the neoliberal transformations taking place in both Norway and Romania since the early 1990s. The feeling of inadequacy resulting from the marginal condition of both countries has been crucial in triggering their juxtaposition in my research project. One can be modern in a number of ways. What Romania and Norway have in common is that they are marginally modern. The signifier "marginally" produces many slippages of meaning, but they all tend to suggest a negative register. What I do try to show is that a psychoanalytical reading of the history of modernisation in the two countries is very fruitful for deconstructing current hegemonic discourses in both Norway and Romania. There are still many politicians and intellectuals in the two countries who recite the tropes of inadequacy, and their recitations serve the political purposes of neoliberalism and neo-imperialism. I have tried to show that there is nothing inherently wrong with being Romanian and/or Norwegian and that the very obsession that something is fundamentally wrong indicates a cultural neurosis of marginality that does not help the two countries in any way.
This book distiled my own way of understanding the relation between epistemology, ontology, and politics, and the best name I found for labelling that way is pragmatic scepticism. Throughout the book, I stay away from the temptation to give a dictionary-like definition of this philosophy. I do not even like to think of it as a philosophy. Instead, I see pragmatic scepticism as a way of being and as a way of relating. A way of being human, i.e. enmeshed in language and limited by our senses; and a way of relating, i.e. crafted by the happy and sad encounters with theories, things, and lifeís happenings. The book is structured in three parts, which together give a sense of the potentials of pragmatic scepticism: as a way of thinking about the world, as a way of approaching theoretical dilemmas, as a way of mapping one's inner contradictions. The first part of the book introduces pragmatic scepticism in relation to the general questions underwriting the philosophy of knowledge and the study of science. The second part is more specific in that it deploys the pragmatic sceptical attitude to the central metatheoretical questions of the discipline of geography. The last part of the book groups under the heading "philosophies of struggle" two more applied essays on the political economy and the political epistemology of conflicts over knowledge in the globalised landscape of higher education in general and geography in particular.
HOW TO CITE: Simandan, D., 2023. “Geographies of the Future.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Geography. Ed. Barney Warf. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/OBO/9780199874002-0257
How to cite: Simandan, D., 2020. Industrialization. In: Kobayashi, A. (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2nd edition. vol. 7, Elsevier, pp. 255–260. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102295-5.10086-1
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118430873.est0103
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118430873.est0464
ABSTRACT: This article (1) defines industrialisation and indicates ways in which it can be measured, (2) highlights the importance of the timing of industrialisation and the inherent limits to the proper scientific explanation of this phenomenon, (3) disentangles the often confused conceptual relation between industrialisation and capitalism, (4) explicates the causal links between industrialisation and modernisation, (5) undertakes a brief assessment of the relative costs and benefits of industrialisation, and (6) discloses the defining contours of scholarship on industrialisation in Anglo-American human geography and illustrates it with a recent attempt to integrate the field with the help of a master metaphor called ‘recursive cartographies’. Its portrayal of economic reality as interplay of legacies, rhythms, and events conveys the usefulness of spatial thinking in industrialisation research.
Online conversations with visionary thinkers from the social sciences and humanities, mobility experts, stakeholders and European policy decision-makers on the topic of New Mobility Cultures and Policies. Dragos Simandan discusses his recent research, as well as the broader context of the COVID-19 pandemic. https://rebalancemobility.eu/being-guided-by-a-single-value-is-troubling-when-you-push-a-value-to-its-extreme-it-becomes-a-vice/